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The "smart buoys," placed throughout the bay and on the Po... tomac River and other rivers, deliver real-time data on temperature, turbidity, water quality and more through the Web, a mobile application or by phone.

Many monitoring programs are ongoing in and along the Chesapeake to collect data, said Doug Wilson, project manager for the Chesapeake Bay Interpretative Buoy System. The nine buoys in the system send information every few minutes.

"This is really happening right now, and it is really changing right now," he said.

Last month, several officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources deployed the most technologically advanced Chesapeake buoy into the bay, near the Dominion Reef at the Gooses, an 80-acre artificial reef built with concrete from the old Woodrow Wilson Bridge. The reef, one of five made from the bridge, sits between the mouths of Parkers Creek on the western shore and Little Choptank River on the eastern shore.

The buoy records weather data and other scientific information from the bay's surface, and it has a monitor on the bay's floor, about 30 feet deep, collecting similar data, including dissolved oxygen measurements.

"If we went deeper than 30 feet, we probably wouldn't have enough oxygen to sustain a lot of life," said Erik Zlokovitz, a state fisheries biologist with the Maryland Artificial Reef Program.

The Dominion Reef at the Gooses is built from about 4,000 tons of concrete from the bridge, plus material from the Dominion Cove Point plant project in Calvert County. The reef was built to re-create an ecosystem and replace hard bottom on the bay's floor, which had been covered in silt and sediment.

In 2008, biologists seeded the reef with baby oysters. Some of those and some naturally occurring oysters are growing on the reef, said Michael Eversmier, a diver with Aquaventures. He said he has seen striped bass at the reef, as well as spadefish, which are typically found in Virginia, and black sea bass, which are new to the area.

"There was zero to nothing three years ago," said Zlokovitz, who noted that invertebrates, at the bottom of the food chain, now cover the reef. Anglers "can catch 100 to 200 [sea bass] with six people fishing for two hours."

Using the buoy's measurements on salinity and temperature, Zlokovitz said, he will be able to better understand oyster growth on the reef, as well as fish movements. As he continues to monitor life on the reef, he can use the information to build more productive artificial reefs and perform other bay restoration efforts.

The $200,000 buoy was donated by Dominion Energy's foundation to the Coastal Conservation Association Maryland for the Maryland Artificial Reef Initiative. The buoy was then given to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.