Maryland Department of Natural Resources issued the following announcement on June 22.
Maryland and Virginia scientists have begun regularly collecting oxygen data as they monitor the health of Chesapeake Bay waters, and track the states’ progress toward restoring the treasured Chesapeake.
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources will track bay oxygen levels throughout the summer during twice-monthly monitoring cruises.
For early June 2018, dissolved oxygen conditions in Maryland’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay mainstem were slightly below average. The hypoxic water volume (areas with less than 2 mg/L oxygen) was 1.0 cubic mile, which is slightly above the early June average of 0.93 cubic miles.
Hypoxia was not observed in Virginia’s portion of the bay, and no anoxic zones (areas with less than 0.2 mg/L oxygen) were detected in Maryland or Virginia. It should be noted that due to rough seas, two stations – one at the mouth of the Potomac River, the other in the mid-channel at the Maryland-Virginia line – were not sampled. On average, these two stations can reduce hypoxia estimates by 1.3 percent.
Original source can be found here.
Source: Maryland Department of Natural Resources
Alerts Sign-up