In recent years, the striped bass population in Chesapeake Bay has been decreasing. This is due, in part, to events known as "fish kills," a large die-off of fish. Fish kills occur when oxygen-consuming processes in the aquatic ecosystem require more oxygen than the plants in the ecosystem produce, thereby reducing the amount of dissolved oxygen available to the fish. One proposed explanation for the increased fish kills in recent years is that human activities have increased the amount of sediment suspended in the water of Chesapeake Bay, largely due to increased erosion into its tributary streams. The sediment acts as a filter for sunlight, which causes a decrease in the intensity of the sunlight that reaches the aquatic plants in the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem.
