The number of oysters in the Chesapeake bay has been declining for years. Much of this is due to [blank] white pollution has had a destructive impact as well. A) sharks
B) dead zones
C) over harvesting
D) overpopulation

Maybe over harvesting? I think that’s right

C) over harvesting

In the seventeenth century, huge numbers of oysters lived in the Bay. European settlers reported enormous oyster reefs that thrust up from the Bay’s bottom, posing navigational hazards to their ships. Colonists first used hand tongs to harvest oysters, but by the 1800s, dredges were also in use. In the 1850s, more than 1.5 million bushels of oysters were harvested from the Bay each year; three decades later, this number jumped to 20 million. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Bay’s oyster fishery was one of the most important in the United States.