Gulf ‘Dead Zone’ Likely To Be Largest Ever, Expert Says

One of the world’s leading authorities on the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone,” Steve DiMarco of Texas A&M University, says the area is likely to be the largest ever recorded and last longer, with marine life affected for hundreds of miles off the Louisiana-Texas coast.

DiMarco, who has studied the Gulf of Mexico for 16 years and Gulf hypoxia – oxygen-depleted water -- since 2002, has just returned from the area and says “it’s about as bad as it gets.

“We examined 74 sites, and just about all of them were hypoxic,” he says. “It’s definitely the worst we’ve seen in the last five years.”

A dead zone occurs when there is hypoxia, or oxygen-depleted water. Such low levels of oxygen are believed to be primarily caused by nutrient pollution from farm fertilizers and other sources as they empty into rivers and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico.

Full story by Keith Randall at Texas A&M News & Information