The Chesapeake Bay received a C+, the best grade it’s ever gotten, on its 20th annual report card on Tuesday.

“This is a very tough test. We grade leniently. Some might say that’s 56% out of 100. So we are roughly halfway, a little bit more than halfway to where we really want to be for a super healthy Chesapeake Bay, where we want to get to. But it is the highest score we’ve had,” Heath Kelsey, director of the Integration Application Network at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, said.

The data that guides the report card hasn’t been this positive in decades, and advocates said it’s the result of a focused restoration effort, which is now being threatened at the federal level.

“We started the report card in 2006, but the data monitoring program that supplies the data that go into the report card, that was started in the ’80s. So we could back-calculate scores all the way to the mid-1980s. So we have a 40-year trend now of scores that we can look at,” Kelsey said.

Most of the bay’s regions showed significant improvements, or no change, compared to last year’s report card, which was a C, or a 50%.

Kelsey said there are seven indicators to determine the bay’s health.

“Dissolved oxygen, total phosphorus, both had A grades. Total nitrogen had a B grade. Benthic community and aquatic grasses had C grades. Water clarity and chlorophyll a had D grades. And four of those indicators are showing the significantly improving trends over time — so dissolved oxygen, aquatic grasses, total phosphorus and total nitrogen,” Kelsey said.

The dissolved oxygen means that the critters in the bay have plenty of oxygen, and aquatic grass is on the rise, meaning those critters have more places to inhabit and hide. There is less fuel, which is what total phosphorus and total nitrogen serve as, for algae and unwanted nutrients in the water.

Water clarity and chlorophyll a scores, which is the primary green pigment in plants and an indicator of algae, have decreased, and benthic communities have stayed the same. That’s the life on the bottom of the bay, such as crabs, clams and oysters, according to Kelsey.

But experts made it clear that even with the great progress this year, the work is far from over.

“When you’re improving, when you’re on an upward trajectory, you don’t stop, you don’t cut funding, right? You double down on investments, and that’s what we need to continue to be doing,” Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm, president of the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science, said.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month repealing a nearly 20-year-old executive order that ensured restoration efforts for the bay. The administration has otherwise suggested rolling back funding for bay restoration in a budget proposal back in April.

Hilary Harp Falk is the president and CEO of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which is a nonprofit advocacy organization with the goal of preserving the bay. She reiterated the need to continue the work.

“We need to keep going. This news is building on decades of success and hard work, and so if we want to continue to see the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers and streams moving off of the Environmental Protection’s dirty waters list, we need to keep going,” Harp Falk said.

Many local leaders came together in 2025 and signed the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement, with the goal of protecting and restoring the bay with healthy habitats, clean water and increased community engagement.

“I want to make sure that all the states and the federal agencies and leaders are all committed to the goals that they signed off on last year, and that we can all productively work towards those goals,” Harp Falk said.

For those looking to get involved in some way, there are ways to help

“There’s everything from engaging in your local water watershed community groups, going out there. We heard from the congressman about cleanups, but really it’s understanding the property that you have, where you can preserve trees, where you can preserve native vegetation,” Maryland Natural Resources Secretary Josh Kurtz said.

Overall, scientists and lawmakers are happy with the results, and they say the public should be too.

“I think the results from this report card should be inspiring to us all. We are making difference collectively as a whole community. We’re making a difference, and so I think that should be inspiring for us all to keep going,” Kelsey said with a smile.

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