August 6, 2024 — Following NOAA predictions earlier this summer that the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico would be larger than average, scientists have now confirmed that those predictions have come true.
Created by excess nutrient pollution along the Mississippi-Atchafalaya watershed, the dead zone in the gulf is a hypoxic area roughly the size of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The low oxygen levels within the area are deadly to fish.
August 2, 2024 — More than 4 million acres of marine life habitat have become a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the lives of fish and other marine animals, NOAA said on Thursday. Although this is an annual issue in the Gulf, this year’s is far larger than anticipated, with an area roughly the size of New Jersey.
The dead zone is an area where there is very little to no oxygen, a situation known as hypoxia, that NOAA says can kill fish and marine life. In June, NOAA predicted an area of 5,827 square miles, roughly the size of Connecticut. But on Thursday, the agency said it has grown to roughly 6,705 square miles, equating to more than 4 million acres of habitat and more than 1,000 square miles larger than anticipated.
It’s the 12th-largest dead zone the agency has recorded in 38 years of measurement — and well above a goal set out by researchers to reduce the area.
According to NOAA, scientists have made it a goal to reduce the average area to fewer than 1,900 square miles by 2035 to help improve the health of the marine ecosystem. As it stands, the five-year average is now nearly 4,300 square miles, more than twice as large as that target.
June 29, 2022 — Researchers are predicting this summer’s dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay will be smaller than the long-term average taken between 1985 and 2021, according to environmental staff.
The change in size is due to the below-average amount of water entering the bay from the watershed’s tributaries this past spring, Chesapeake Bay Program staff said.
Program staff made the announcement alongside researchers from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, the University of Michigan, and U.S. Geological Survey.
Decreased nutrient and sediment pollution from jurisdictions within the watershed also contributed to the smaller dead zone, staff said.
The dead zones consist of areas of low oxygen, known as hypoxic regions. This is where there are dissolved oxygen concentrations of less than two milligrams per liter— primarily caused by excess nutrient pollution flowing into the bay, staff said.
March 9, 2022 — The crab pots are piled high at the fishing docks in Newport, Oregon. Stacks of tire-sized cages fill the parking lot, festooned with colorful buoys and grimy ropes. By this time in July, most commercial fishers have called it a year for Dungeness crab. But not Dave Bailey, the skipper of the 14-meter Morningstar II. The season won’t end for another month, and “demand for fresh, live crab never stops,” Bailey says with a squinting smile and fading Midwestern accent.
It’s a clear morning, and he leads me aboard a white-and-blue crab boat, built in 1967 and owned by Bailey since 1992. He skirts a giant metal tank that he hopes will soon hold a mob of leggy crustaceans and ducks his tall frame into a cluttered cabin, where an age-worn steering wheel gleams beneath the front windows and a fisherman’s prayer hangs on the wall: “Dear God, be good to me. Your sea is so great and my boat is so small.”
The churning Pacific is just one challenge Bailey and his fellow crabbers must face. Recent years have also brought outbreaks of domoic acid, which renders crab unsafe to eat, and increasing incidents of humpback whales getting tangled in crab gear. However, there’s another emerging problem that threatens not only Bailey’s livelihood but the very ecosystem that sustains it. I’ve come today to see a tool that could help crabbers manage.
On the counter in the kitchenette, amid bowls of instant noodles and tinned oysters, Bailey shows me a sturdy black tube, about 60 centimeters long, that fits neatly inside a crab pot. When submerged, the contraption measures oxygen levels in the water and, when retrieved, displays them on a separate box with a screen for Bailey to read. The box also beams the data back to scientists at Oregon State University (OSU).
Most marine animals don’t breathe air, but they need oxygen to live, absorbing it from the water as they swim, burrow, or cling to the seafloor. But lately, bouts of dangerously low oxygen levels—or hypoxia—have afflicted parts of the North American west coast, affecting critters from halibut to sea stars. These “dead zones” cause ecological disruption and economic pain for fishers like Bailey, who can’t sell crabs that have suffocated in their traps.
Read the full story at Smithsonian
August 7, 2017 — Right now, in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, lies an area the size of New Jersey that’s so oxygen-deprived it’s void of almost all marine life.
The so-called “dead zone” isn’t a new phenomenon: It appears in the Gulf, and other bodies of water, every summer. But what makes this year’s Gulf dead zone unique is its magnitude: At 8,776 square miles, it’s the largest ever since tracking began in 1985, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced this week.
Its size is projected to affect local fishing economies and is raising questions over the amount of pollutants that flow into our water — particularly nutrients from excessive use of nitrogen fertilizers.
“It’s a symptom of an ecosystem that’s not functioning,” said Dr. Nancy Rabalais, a professor in oceanography and coastal science at Louisiana State University who has been leading survey missions of dead zones since NOAA started tracking them.
What causes dead zones
The dead zones occur as a result of nitrogen and phosphorus flowing into water from farmers using nutrients on crops as fertilizer, and those nutrients getting washed into streams and rivers by rain.
Once it gets to the Gulf of Mexico, the nutrients stimulate the growth of algae. The algae then sinks to the bottom of the ocean and bacteria start decomposing the organic matter in the algae. That process uses oxygen, drawing it from the water.