Bay's

But restoring the Chesapeake also means considering how we build our homes, office buildings and factories. George Hawkins, director of the District Department of the Environment in Washington, says communities in the watershed are designing new buildings that conserve energy and water and pollute less. They are also upgrading older buildings to green standards and protecting land from development. Hawkins says individual actions can make a huge difference in the bay's restoration.

Oyster reefs harbor huge amounts of life. Scores of plants and animals find food and shelter in their nooks and crannies. As the Bay's reefs wore down, that habitat was lost. Further damage came from increasing runoff from coastal farmland, deforestation and development, which silted over the flatter oyster bars, cutting off the creatures' food and dissolved oxygen. Then, in the mid-1900s came the final assault — a pair of parasites.

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in America — the third largest in the world. A century ago it boasted an oyster fishery second to none. Ships reportedly would run aground on its mountainous oyster reefs. No more. The shellfish population has been devastated by overfishing, pollution and development. But, efforts are underway to rebuild the Bay's oyster reefs.

Disease, poor water quality and decades of overharvest have drastically reduced the bay's natural oyster population.