Global Warming Waters Pose New Threat to Fisheries: Depleted Oxygen Zones
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [News Deeply] - Matthew O. Berger - July 6, 2017
As another massive “dead zone” forms in the Gulf of Mexico, other patches of low-oxygen waters are expanding elsewhere in the ocean, threatening marine ecosystems as climate change accelerates.
This summer’s Gulf dead zone, which the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expects to be the third-largest since monitoring began in 1985, is the result of the runoff of agricultural fertilizers and municipal wastewater. Nutrients in the runoff stimulate algae blooms, which absorb most of the oxygen in the water as they decompose and sink to the seafloor. High stream levels this year have carried even higher levels of nutrient pollution from the land out to sea and scientists expect the Gulf dead zone to double this summer, to the size of New Jersey. Such low-oxygen dead zones threaten fish and other marine life, including...
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