Underwater grasses are coming back in the Chesapeake Bay, increasing their domain by about 10 percent last year, according to a survey overseen by Bob Orth with the Virginia Institute for Marine Science. Grass beds are a critical part of the Bay ecology, offering shelter for baby crabs and fish, breathing oxygen into the water, and providing fodder for waterfowl.
Recovering from a massive die-off in 2005, grass beds covered an estimated 65,000 acres of the Bay bottom. That’s still way short of the 185,000-acre goal proposed for 2010, and even of the 90,000 acres as recently as 2002. But it does demonstrate that the Bay has the capacity to recover if we just give it a chance.
The Virginian-Pilot has the story here. (Photo credit: Michael’s Tips for the Technophobic.)
