The Chesapeake Bay Plastic Survey is intended to assess the necessity and to generate a baseline for a future monitoring effort for plastics pollution trends in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Awarded the Woodward and Curran’s Impact Grant, Ocean Research Project will assess bay-wide plastic pollution by exploring plastic particle count as a water quality indicator for monitoring future bay health. In cooperation with its partners, ORP hopes to repeat this project biannually to enrich understanding of the Bay-wide magnitude of plastic pollution, export to the ocean, and how that is changing relative to Bay improvements and climate change.
ORP’s study will be the first to determine particle concentration of plastic pollution across the United States’ largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay. The information from this pilot project will be used to inform a dedicated multi-year sampling program by the Chesapeake Bay Program partners at the federal, state, and local levels.