According to the National Geographic, the Chesapeake Bay was one of the first hypoxic zones to be identified in the 1970s. The Chesapeake Bay experiences seasonal hypoxia due to high nitrogen levels. These nitrogen levels are caused by urbanization, there are multiple factories that pollute the atmosphere with nitrogen, and agriculture, the opposite side of the bay is used for poultry farming, which produces a lot of manure that ends up running off into the Chesapeake Bay.
From 1985 - 2019, there were efforts from the caretakers of Chesapeake Bay to reduce the annual hypoxic volumes. There was significant improvement in 2016-2017 that gave assurance to the caretakers that the efforts were successful, however recent data has shown that further efforts are needed to continuously curb the effects of global warming.