Dead Zone

Not the end zone or the end of cell service zone, nor any zone involving the zombie apocalypse (unless there are zombie fish), the dead zone I planned to blog about appears in the Gulf of Mexico each year around this time. The size of the dead zone varies from year to year too. It is caused when nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer washed into the Mississippi basin from farms feed algae blooms at the river’s mouth. Algae and protozoa that eat them die and sink to the bottom where their decomposition uses up oxygen, the oxygen that starfish and eels and other sea creatures need to survive. The Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone is roughly the size of Connecticut but varies a little each year. The Mississippi River Collaborative and the Environmental Protection Agency have been pushing to set standards to reduce the kinds of pollution that causes the dead zone in the gulf.

So I figured I had the dead zone thing pretty much all wrapped up until I found out there is another! A Google research ship, the Falcor, is heading out to study another dead zone, this time in the Pacific Ocean. This dead zone is off Vancouver Island and researchers think the periodic hypoxia (lack of oxygen) might be caused by climate change or caustic runoff like sewage from the land.

If these dead zones keep appearing and multiplying this may be more like a fish zombie apocalypse than I thought!