<P> The water is glassy, smooth and gorgeous, his wake white against the deep blue . That's the problem with the Chesapeake . It's so damned beautiful . </P> <P> One account suggested how the Chesapeake attracts people: </P> <P> You see them everywhere on Maryland's Eastern Shore, the weekend sailors . They are unmistakable with their deep tans, their baggy shorts, their frayed polo shirts, their Top - Siders worn without socks . Some may not even own their own boats, much less win regattas, but they are inexorably drawn to the Chesapeake Bay...I planned to spend my days boating, eating as many Chesapeake Bay blue crabs as possible and making a little study of Eastern Shore locals . For city folk like me, they're interesting, even exotic--the weather - beaten crabbers and oystermen called "watermen," gentlemen - farmers and sharecroppers, boat builders, antiques dealers--all of whom sound like Southerners with mouthfuls of marbles when they talk .--Susan Spano, Los Angeles Times, 2008 </P> <P> In the 1970s, the Chesapeake Bay was found to contain one of the planet's first identified marine dead zones, where waters were so depleted of oxygen that they were unable to support life, resulting in massive fish kills . Today the bay's dead zones are estimated to kill 75,000 tons of bottom - dwelling clams and worms each year, weakening the base of the estuary's food chain and robbing the blue crab in particular of a primary food source . Crabs are sometimes observed to amass on shore to escape pockets of oxygen - poor water, a behavior known as a "crab jubilee". Hypoxia results in part from large algal blooms, which are nourished by the runoff of residential, farm and industrial waste throughout the watershed . One report in 2010 criticized Amish farmers for having cows which "generate heaps of manure that easily washes into streams and flows onward into the Chesapeake Bay". </P>

What is the total area of the chesapeake bay watershed