The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. The bay contains eighteen hundred trillion gallons of water and stretches over 200 miles in length from its northernmost point, the Susquehanna River, to the southernmost tip of the bay, the Atlantic Ocean. Home to more than seventeen million people, the Chesapeake Bay is the primary water source for more than 150 rivers and streams. Due to the large number of rivers and streams fed by the bay, this watershed impacts the lives of citizens on the Eastern Seaboard, which spans a total of six U.S. states. The importance of the Chesapeake Bay is incredible; two of the five major North Atlantic ports of the United States – Baltimore and Hampton Roads – are in the bay. (Chesapeake Bay Program, n/d). The highly productive Chesapeake Bay ecosystem provides food and shelter for a wide variety of plants and animals in and around the bay. The bay's essential natural resources have fueled economic growth for centuries. One of the bay's greatest resources is oysters. Oysters are filter-feeding organisms, meaning they pump water through their gills, trapping algae, sediment and nutrients as they release clean water back into the bay. The material collected during the oysters' digestive process forms crystallized layers of nutrient-rich material that sometimes turn into pearls. Water filtration provides food for oysters and also helps to continually clean the Chesapeake Bay. One oyster can filter fifty gallons of water over a twenty-four hour period, according to many sources. Oysters were once capable of filtering the entire bay in about a week, but these creatures are now rare in the bay. The Chesapeake Bay oyster, also known as (crasso...... middle of paper ......es for oysters which also fights against overexploitation. All of these resolutions help increase the Bay oyster population. Oysters in the Chesapeake Bay are currently struggling "Maryland, Virginia and their federal partners face a historic opportunity. A comprehensive five-year study has concluded that importation. of a foreign oyster is not a good approach and that the restoration of the native oyster should be accelerated and targeted” (cbf 2010). oysters are on track. “President Barack Obama issued an executive order for the Chesapeake Bay in 2009, and in response, the federal government implemented an executive order to rebuild functional oyster reef networks in. 20 tributaries by 2025." (cbf 2010) This type of forward thinking will increase the Chesapeake Bay oyster population..