The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. The bay contains eighteen hundred trillion gallons of water and extends over 200 miles in length between its northernmost point, the Susquehanna River, and the bay's southernmost tip, the Atlantic Ocean. Home to more than seventeen million people, the Chesapeake Bay is the primary source of water for more than 150 rivers and streams. Due to the large amount of rivers and streams fed by the bay, this watershed impacts the lives of citizens of the Eastern Shore that 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 located on the Bay. (Chesapeake Bay Program, n/a). The highly productive Chesapeake Bay ecosystem provides food and shelter for a wide variety of plant and animal life in and around the bay. The critical natural resources provided by the bay stimulate economic growth and have lasted for centuries. One of the bay's greatest resources are oysters. Oysters are filter feeders, meaning they pump water through their gills trapping algae, sediment and nutrients as they release the clean water into the bay. Material collected through the oysters' digestive process forms crystallized layers of nutrient-rich matter that sometimes develop into pearls. Filtering the water provides food for oysters to grow and also helps continually clean the Chesapeake Bay. According to many sources, one oyster can filter fifty gallons of water in a twenty-four hour period. Oysters were once able to filter through the entire bay in about a week, however these creatures are now scarce in the bay. The Chesapeake Bay oyster, also known as (large...... middle of paper......es for oysters which also combats overharvesting. All these resolutions are helping to increase the oyster population of the bay.Oysters in the Chesapeake Bay is in trouble right now. “Maryland, Virginia, and its federal partners face a historic opportunity. An exhaustive five-year study concluded that importing an oyster foreign is the wrong approach and that the restoration of native Oysters should be expanded and focused.”(cbf 2010). President Barack Obama issued an executive order for the Chesapeake Bay in 2009, and in In response, the federal government set a goal of rebuilding functioning oyster reef networks in 20 tributaries by 2025.” (cbf 2010 ). will increase the Chesapeake Bay oyster population.