Director Barry Levinson was approached to do a documentary about the Chesapeake bay. He watched another documentey about the Chesapeake bay that talked about the pollution and the lack of fish. He said it was a great documentary but nobody will care about it. And so he said he would take all of the facts about the Chesapeake bay and turn it into a theatrical base piece.
At one point near the beginning, a CDC doctor mentions that "last year" (2008, the year prior to the film's release) there was a deadly fungal outbreak in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. New reports from February 2008 indicate that there was indeed an outbreak of a deadly tropical fungus in 2008 called Cryptococcus gattii, which normally infects koala bears. Over the preceding 7 years, 176 people had fallen ill from C. gattii, and 8 people had died in the reported outbreak.
Chesapeake Bay is situated around the States of Maryland and Virginia, USA, with a primary outflow to the Atlantic Ocean, it is some 200 mi (320 km) in length and at is widest points is 30 miles (48 km) wide with an average depth 21 ft (6.4 m), with a catchment area of 64,299 square miles (166,530 km2).
The Jacques-Yves Cousteau Institute is mentioned; albeit, officially called The Cousteau Society, founded in 1973.
Jane McNeill's debut.