way up the current bay, between West Falmouth and Mattapoisett. The bay's current configuration, a well-mixed central bay and fringing shallow drowned-river valleys, with their shallow depth, tidal action, and surface waves, promotes mixing of the estuarine waters to create a productive aquatic ecosystem. Like many estuaries, however, increasing development and land-use changes by the surrounding communities are accompanied by nutrient runoff leading to eutrophication (an increase in nutrient levels leading to oxygen depletion) in the smaller embayments. Decreases in eelgrass, scallops, and herring have also been noted, but direct cause-and-effect relationships are not clear. Coordinated management efforts in Buzzards Bay have helped to decrease shellfish closures, conserve habitat for sea birds, and preserve open space. History Buzzards Bay was first named Gosnold's Hope by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold. The modern name was presumably given by colonists who saw a large bird that they called a buzzard near its shores. The bird was actually an osprey. After a downturn caused by DDT, today increasing numbers of osprey breed along the shores of the bay thanks to restoration efforts led by the Buzzards Bay Coalition and longtime Westport residents Gil and Josephine Fernandez. The first naval engagement of the American Revolution, the Battle off Fairhaven, occurred in Buzzards Bay when patriots retrieved two vessels that were captured by the British sloop of war Falcon. On 14 May 1775, American Captain Daniel Egery and Capt. Nathaniel Pope of Fairhaven in the sloop Success (40 tons, 30 men) retrieved two vessels captured by the British crew of Captain John Linzee (Lindsey), Royal Navy commander of HMS Falcon (14 guns, 110 men). Crew member Noah Stoddard and the others took the first naval prisoners of the war, 13 British crew; two were wounded and one died. The bay was the location, in 1936, of one of only five documented fatal shark attacks in the commonwealth's history. In 1987, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution experimented with a new growth structure allowing Blue mussels to grow above the Benthic Turbidity Zone leading to a new commercial scale mariculture technique. In 1991, towns located on Buzzards Bay suffered the worst effects from the storm surge of Hurricane Bob. The Buzzards Bay disaster happened on April 27, 2003. An oil spill of 98,000 gallons of oil leaked from a barge, destroying much of the shellfish business and killing many birds. Ra Ra Riot's John Pike's body was