University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia and his colleagues have predicted that this year’s Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” could be one of the largest on record. He told that it continuing a decades-long trend that threatens the health of a half-billion-dollar fishery. The scientists’ latest forecast, released June 18, calls for a Gulf dead zone of between 7,450 and 8,456 square miles—an area about the size of New Jersey.
It is expected that Gulf dead zone will blanket about 7,980 square miles, roughly the same size as last year’s zone. Scavia informed that this would put the years 2009, 2008 and 2001 in a virtual tie for second place on the list of the largest Gulf dead zones. Scavia also told that the growth of these dead zones is an ecological time bomb.
It is noticed that the Gulf dead zone forms each spring and summer off the Louisiana and Texas coast when oxygen levels drop too low to support most life in bottom and near-bottom waters. The Gulf hypoxia research team is supported by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research and includes scientists from Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
As per the prediction a large 2009 Gulf hypoxic zone is based on above-normal flows in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers this spring, which delivered large amounts of the nutrient nitrogen. In April and May, flows in the two rivers were 11 percent above average. Additional flooding of the Mississippi since May could result in a dead zone that exceeds the upper limit of the forecast, the scientists said. The predicted 2009 dead-zone decline does not result from cutbacks in the use of nitrogen, which remains one of the key drivers of hypoxia in the Bay.
