Tom Weaver’s a charter boat captain. He’s been fishing these waters for more than 30 years.It's one of the best fishing spots in the world. It's one of the nicest places to live in the world.The Chesapeake Bay is the country’s largest estuary. It spans over 4,500 square miles. More than double the size of Delaware. And it’s home to 10 million people and 3,600 species of marine life.
This body of water is fed by the Chesapeake Bay watershed. It spans 64,000 square miles across six states and DC. 73 percent of this area is public land. In 2021, the dead zone was 7 percent larger than the yearly average. And it lasted a month and a half longer. But agricultural pollution isn’t the only problem. On the western shore, stormwater runoff and pollution from wastewater treatment plants are feeding the bay’s dead zones.