May 22, 2019 — Bay health took a hit from record rainfall last year, but experts claim the Chesapeake’s growing resilience managed to keep a bad situation from getting worse.
The 2018 Chesapeake Bay Report Card was released by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, one of several groups that assess the bay’s health each year. It put the bay’s overall score at 46% — a drop from the previous year’s 54%, but still a C on its 20-point grading scale.
Bay resilience is critical because very wet years may no longer be an anomaly. Climate models predict an increase in weather extremes, and local marine experts are seeing some evidence of that.
“We’re encouraged that, in spite of the fact that we had a major insult to the bay with all the runoff and rainfall in 2018, that we took a dip but we didn’t crash,” said Bill Dennison, vice president for science applications at the center.
“Many of the living resources appear to be fairly resilient,” said Mark Luckenbach, associate director for research and advisory services at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “But we need to understand that that’s likely to become more frequent — these really high rainfall events.”
VIMS, affiliated with the College of William and Mary, collected much of the data used to compile the report, particularly for bay-wide seagrass, Virginia fish and blue crabs.