Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Record 'Dead Zone' Predicted in Gulf of Mexico
The "Dead Zone" in the Gulf of Mexico – a region of oxygen-depleted water off the Louisiana and Texas coasts that is harmful to sea life and the commercial fishing industry – is predicted to be the largest ever recorded this year, federal scientists announced Tuesday.
The majority of land in the Mississippi's watershed is farm land (in green). Each spring, as farmers fertilize their land in preparation for crop season, rain washes fertilizer off the land and into streams, rivers, and then the Gulf of Mexico. This leads to a Dead Zone in the Gulf. (NOAA) The unusually large size of the zone is due to the extreme flooding of the Mississippi River this spring.
The Dead Zone occurs when there is not enough oxygen in the water to support marine life. Also known as "hypoxia," it is created by nutrient runoff, mostly from over-application of fertilizer on agricultural fields. It flows into streams, then rivers and eventually the Gulf.
Forty-one percent of the contiguous USA drains into the Mississippi River and then out to the Gulf of Mexico. The majority of the land in Mississippi's watershed is farm land.
Excess nutrients such as nitrogen can spur the growth of algae, and when the algae die, their decay consumes oxygen faster than it can be brought down from the surface, according to NOAA. As a result, fish, shrimp and crabs can suffocate, threatening the region's commercial fishing industry.
Scientists say the area could measure between 8,500 and 9,421 square miles, or an area about the size of New Hampshire. If it does reach those levels, it would be the largest since mapping of the Gulf Dead Zone began in 1985.
The largest Dead Zone on record occurred in 2002 and encompassed more than 8,400 square miles. On average, the Dead Zone size is estimated to be 6,000 square miles.
41 Comments so far
Show AllJust more evidence that modern civilization is detrimental to the entire planet.
Stepping back to organic, sustainable living would help.
So would a massive human die-off.
Luckily, between resource depletion and human political stupidity, we should be able to meet both reasonable requests.
They are already working on the die-off in military and military-funded university laboratories all over the world. Shouldn't be too long now, soon as vaccines are available for the elite prior to release.
Organic Ag would be a step up, really.
So would sustainable living.
"The "Dead Zone" in the Gulf of Mexico – a region of oxygen-depleted water off the Louisiana and Texas coasts that is harmful to sea life and the commercial fishing industry – is predicted to be the largest ever recorded this year, federal scientists announced Tuesday."
I thought we'd already experienced that with the BP oil spill. Did the spill have any lasting impact on the size of this event? I am guessing no one knows for sure. I am betting these scientists haven't even factored in any correlation to corporate disaster. But you can be sure if BP is ever held ultimately responsible for their damage they'll use this to mitigate their damages and liability. In fact I wouldn't be surprised to find that they funded this study.
Overfishing predators
Jellyfish blooms
Disolving coral reefs
Warming water
Changing currents
Wetlands loss
Rising seas
Melting glaciers
Arctic plankton die-off, reducing oxygen production
City-sized fishing vessels with eerily efficient location equipment
Trawling
Plasticized eddies
Mitsubishi's business plan to exploit tuna extinction
Harvesting of sargassum, which nurture juvenile sealife
Fish farming spewing disease and antibiotics
Farmed fish feed is other fish
Genetically modified fish
The Ross Sea opening to fishing
Oil exploration
Sulfur release die-offs off African coast caused by overfishing large fish
And on and on, death by a thousand cuts until the oceans no longer provide nutrients for any fish or mammal.
Killing another eco-zone, eh? Ho hum... who needs to breathe, anyway?
How many times can you kill the Gulf?
ie BP
Listen to Thomas Dolby's "I Love You Goodbye"...
under a Cajun moon, I lay me open
there is a spirit here that can't be broken...
you better drive that dirty Datsun into the Gulf of Mexico
We're spinning through the universe on a dying planet, I feel such an unspeakable sorrow, what's the tipping point?
I think it's too late already. I think, thanks to the US and its Corporate Owners, the whole planet is going into the shitter over the next ten years. Live it up now. Eat, drink and be merry now, for tomorrow we drown in our own sewage.
The planet isn't even close to "dying"!
Half-a-billion years till the Sun gets too big for life on the Earth to exist.
Loooooong time yet.
Introducing some novel chemicals and materials into the ecosphere, fixing a whole bunch of new nitrogen, and releasing a lot of trapped carbon and methane isn't going to do anything like end or even really threaten Life on Earth.
Human Civilizations might not do so well.
Lots of human populations might not either.
The Globalized, telecommunications-linked, electrified industrial World may be done for.
A bunch of species are goners.
Likely not humans (we're pretty tough under the fat and stupidity).
So cheer up!
is anyone else counting the ducks?
I live near a 290 acre lake that is on the main migration route along the east edge of the Rockys. we usually have several hundred birds (ducks, grebes, advocets, geese, swans, sandpipers, etc.) nesting around the lake. However this year we only seem to have 10 or 20 pairs of coots and one pair of red-eared grebes. it's worrying to see such a huge, healthy habitat virtually empty.
many of hte ducks that nest or stop over on the way north winter along the golf coast. is anyone else noticing a decline this year?
Oh yes indeed GottaGetOffTheGrid,
A major decline of many different specie of birds has been apparent for the past three years where we live in a mountainous area of the southwest. This year the lack of birds migrating through is much worse.. We also see few butterflies and many of the numerous specie of bees, also no hornets, wasps, preying mantis or lady bugs. We have some new inscets which we are unfamiliar with.
In addition we had zero rain last winter and are now sitting on a dry powder keg, a huge forest fire is raging only 12 miles from our land. The millions of oak trees in our area are dying due to a long term drought.
Where we live is a bird watchers paradise, or it used to be... Not anymore.
Wonder if the lack of rain in a desert and the diminished sightings of birds and insects are connected?
Where you live is marginal for settled human society even at a Neolithic level of technics and population density, with strong cultural and personal knowledge of the ecosystem to boot.
For our technical society, current population densities, and with the typical very weak ecosystem knowledge level of today, its hopeless.
AGW/RCC or not, you should move if you can.
Good luck.
The Wall Street Casino will be taking bets on polllution control technology
A huge variety of birds throughout the America's migrate each season to Prudhoe Bay Alaska. Especially waterfowl and accompanying birds of prey. I have witnessed this incredible invasion since the early 70's. I swear there are huge areas where there is A bird with their young on every square foot of tundra in sight, mile after mile.
I have watched Predator Jaegers, incredably fast sky divers and gracefully swooping acrobats chase Snow Buntings with their unique rapid evasive corkscrew precision, escape their tormentors through miles of pipe rack. I never witnessed A buntings capture. I have watched Snow Owls slap and tear foxes apart over the theft of an Arctic Hare lunch. The Arctic Fox are no match for the determined Geese and Swans protecting their young either.. I sadly remember A year when two clever Fox swam across the water to Snow Goose Island and nearly wiped out that years Snow Geese population by decimating their newly hatched Eggs.
One particularly disturbing fall I watched several Fox biding their time for A small pond to freeze over that would facilitate their appetite for 5 baby geese who were born so late that particularly early winter freeze-up year, their underdeveloped pin feathers deprived them of flight and their parents had no choice but to abandon them to escape the rapidly approaching winter. The freezing of the pond took A few weeks as the open water got smaller and smaller like the bulls-eye of A dart board. It took every thing I had in me not to risk my job and rescue those small birds.
I have gained A real respect and appreciation for these beautiful feathery creatures. They all have personalities of their own. The bravest birds I ever witnessed were the tiny sandpiper types that would lay there eggs in the gravel along the pipeline access roads. These little birds, no bigger than A canary, would run up to you screeching, within inches of your feet, then run away just to lure you away from their marble sized, tiny, vulnerably treasured eggs. I had so much respect for these brave little critters that I would evacuate the area find another place to work. The most intellgent birds were the Jaegers and Ravens. I have watched Ravens learn how to stack Ritz crackers ten high on the hood of my truck within minutes and carry them off for their snacks. I have held scraps of meat in my hands, and watched Jaegers so high up in the air that they were smaller than A speck of pepper, swoop down in incredably mind boggling speed, hover and take the prize. One time is all it takes and that bird will know and recognize your truck, which has hundreds of twins, but this bird will find and let you know it's presence every day for A snack. Of course this is all against wildlife policy, but I saw little harm in it.
My job there was that of A Pipe Inspector, basically finding pipe wall loss corrosion/erosion before the erosion cuts and corrosion "almost holes" in the pipe were located/repaired or replaced. Keeping the oil in the pipe and finding the potential leakers before they found us and I found many of these in my career there.. I lost that job of 30+ years by exposing/whistleblowing on A Bogus, non compliant, give A shit Inspection company contracted out by British Petroleum. This company had people that were pencil whipping Inspections, had no written procedures, had several "Technicians" that weren't capable or Certified to be doing the work they were doing. I found myself essentially working for A pack of Carny clowns and Circus barkers when A bogus BP Exec cashed in by bringing this "ship of fools" on board.. All in all they were found guilty of over 75 issues of non-compliance to age old Standards set by pipeline Regulating Agencies, EPA, OSHA, Alaska Dept. of Environmental, Dept. of Energy and Commerce and countless other State and Federal Agency Laws. This Government and all of its corrupted/bullshit Agencys, the "Legal Profession, the BRIBED JUDGES and Corporations are nothing more than A CROCK of SHIT in my humble experience. We are in BIG trouble when money is all that matters when it comes to JUSTICE for standing up and doing the right thing for our commons!!! As far as I am concerned my attorney betrayed me and was boughtt off along with OSHA, The Dept. of Labor, Investigative Journalists, Energy and Commerce, EPA, Office of Govt. Accountability, and most especially the JUDGE with the Dept. of Administrative Law Judges. After 5 years of futility I just can't over estimate or even begin to relate to people how apathetic, corrupted and sinister this system has become. That Inspection Company kept that contract with British Petroleum and remains at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
A majority of these birds migrate through the Gulf of Mexico before reaching Prudhoe Bay Alaska. They travel and stop along the route of the future "Key Stone {Koch brothers} future Oil Tar Sands Pipeline route from the upper Great Lakes area, through the mid-west and down to Texas. I find it so ironic that these creatures that are so wild, free and capable of traveling the length of the globe, cannot escape the ubiquitous stranglehold that BP and Big Oil has on their world. From Tropical South America to the far reaches of the Arctic they can't get away from the nemesis of Big Oil.
I sit here now at my home in Michigan and wonder how well all of these beautiful creatures have survived man's reckless behavior towards their existence. With the recent crime scene in the Gulf and the irresponsible Fukushima design engineering and resultant disaster, the Coal fired power plant poisoning of air and sea, along with all of the other usual, expected, secretive crimes that greedy men commit against Nature and all of the mind boggling irresponsibility that we know goes on unabated-It all just makes me so very, very angry!!! We don't deserve to live on this Planet....
I am just a Brooklynite rolling in after having a few drinks with a friend, and wanted to say how moving I found your post, especially your descriptions of birds. Thanks for taking the time to write moving prose.
Thank you for the kind words pleasethink...
Well put. Thank you. Don't deserve to live on this planet indeed.
Thank you for the beautiful reminder. Many of us are angry right along with you. It is good to know such caring exists. Thank you for being a whistle blower too. After blowing the whistle in Michigan at the county level, my experience with the law, courts and government compels me to verify your appraisal of the system, as we experienced similar shocking levels of corruption. Your good instincts and courage are what can still create hope for people. When transcripts literally disappear and state courts are too political to bring justice- one loses faith that man can ever deserve what we inherited here on earth. We need to save Michigan now from Snyder. Don’t quit yet please- though true joy is indeed a walk with nature.
Thank you Michigan woman...Few people fully realize the depth of betrayal, the futility of being right by law but trumped by power and money...The total corruption of this system can not be fully known until you go through an experience like this...The hardest part now is burying the hatchet...
Would I do it again??? Of course I would!
Thank you for cultivating your empathy with the other living beings. It's better that you be a jaded former inspector than a willing robot-accomplice in their destruction. Your humanity is intact, in the sense that humanity was a part of the natural world before its empires took over.
Those empires thought they would conquer the earth, but in the end the earth will conquer each of them right back.
Thanks for the kind and well placed words abstractedaway....
It made me realize that Danial Ellsberg, Bradley Manning and the rest of those that have nothing to gain and everything to lose are the real hero's of this world...
The "Willing Robot-Accomplices" are sadly running our country today, running it right into the ground!!!
The Brain Dead Zone:
1. The American Conservative Union
2. American Family Association
3. Citizens United
4. The Conservative Caucus
5. Eagle Forum
6. Family Research Council
7. Freedom's Watch
8. Freedom Works
9. John Birch Society
10. RightMarch.com
Gee,.....Looks like a clear-cut case of Ecoterrorism to me.
Western civilization is a dead zone.
BPs gulf dead zone is not the same one as the one at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The BP dead zone is further east and south and is far larger in area. It also includes hundreds of miles of the very important marsh lands all along the coast where the chain of life for the gulf sea life is supposed to begin.
Sailors of the US Coast Guard report they have seen almost zero life in that large area of the gulf and few adult porpoise in any areas and hardly any young porpoise.
BP does not have enough money to pay for what they accomplished. Even if they did, they will never pay a penny. In fact due to legal tax breaks for their accident disaster, they will earn a handsome profit from it... So will their corrupt lawyer Feinberg.
Google up B.P.'s "Ombudsman", Judge Stanley Sporkin, AKA "Slimy Affirm" when he was Head of the CIA's legal Department during the Reagan Year's Iran Contra Operation...Anyone that thinks B.P. hired this heavily "Politically connected" old power broker for "Ombudsman" is sadly mistaken...
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2010/062310Lendman.shtml
Deceased, Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist Gary Webb was all too familiar with Stanley. Webb broke the story in The San Jose Mercury News and later in his book "Dark Alliance" of the plane loads full of cocaine "heading into Los Angeles", compliments of the CIA with Carte Blanc permission of the Justice Department and DEA. After his "Blacklisting" and being chased by "spooks" throughout the country, Webb committed "Suicide" as the story goes..."Freeway Ricky Ross", just out of prison says otherwise...The CIA finally did admit to the cocaine shipments/profits...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb#Awards
Stanley was also Chief Enforcemnt officer for the SEC and according to one Catherine Fitts Austin, Stanley was deeply ninvolved in destroying Hamilton Securities and their people friendy software program which was designed around Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac housing and Mortgage affairs:
A Case History of Sporkin Shenanigans:
"Catherine Austin Fitts founded and was president of The Hamilton Securities Group, a Washington DC-based investment bank and financial software firm. She explained its establishment as follows":
"While serving as Assistant Housing Secretary and FHA Commissioner at HUD (under GHW Bush), she "tried (in vain) on numerous occasions to persuade (HUD Secretary) Jack Kemp and his staff not to propose new policies that would result in the abrogation of government contracts or contractual obligations with respect to financial assets."
"Had she succeeded, it might have prevented the housing bubble, mortgage fraud, and spillover financial crisis, destroying the wealth, jobs, home ownership, and futures of millions of Americans, what didn't happen by chance, what was engineered and implemented over years to let Wall Street and other profiteers earn billions at the public's expense".
"In 1990, Fitts left HUD to found Hamilton months later, several years afterward winning a competitive bid to serve as the Federal Housing Insurance Administration's financial advisor, executing, from 1994 - 1997, $10 billion in mortgage loan sales as well as strategic services for the agency's $500 billion mortgage and mortgage insurance portfolio, using revolutionary techniques greatly benefitting HUD and millions of taxpayers. On Solari.com, she then explained what happened, saying":
"One day I was a wealthy entrepreneur with a beautiful home, a successful business and money in the bank....The next day I was hunted, living through 18 audits and investigations and a smear campaign directed not just at me but also members of my family, colleagues and friends who helped me."
"She believes it "originated at the highest levels," putting her through more than two years of "serious physical harassment, and surveillance, (including) burglary, stalking, having house guests followed, and (finding) dead animals left on (her) doormat."
http://www.whereisthemoney.org/hotseat/stanleysporkin.htm
"Perhaps also his involvement in Iran-Contra, Sporkin still CIA General Counsel, and may have drafted the secret DOJ-CIA Iran-Contra Memorandum of Understanding sanctioning Agency drugs trafficking covertly, what investigative journalist Gary Webb later revealed in "Dark Alliance," his explosive book about CIA complicity in illegal drugs, the agency's longstanding practice to help fund its operations, besides tens of billions more in black budget allocations, once estimated at over $50 billion annually by a former Agency insider".
Access these links for more information:
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/ch11p1.htm.
http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files/cia-doj-agreement.html.
http://www.dunwalke.com/media/gideonMOU.html
I just wonder if Stanley ever lost A nights sleep over the thousands of "Crack" babies in the 1980's L.A.???
B.P.'s "Deputy Ombudsman", one Billie Guarde co-authored my "Whistleblower Investigation" at Prudhoe Bay, AK..The "Investigation totally vindicated me, but I was thrown under the bus and recieved no support from her or B.P. for my efforts at helping them become A more responsible and safer company. This woman is the Moral equivalent of A sociopathic grifter...
B.P. indeed has some strange bedfellows...What A proud Heritage....
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/05/25/black-911-a-walk-on-the-dark-side-part-3
Fertilizers are made from coal and oil. When the oil runs out, these practices will cease.
Oh - and human population will collapse. Food riots, that sort of thing.
Yes PaulK, what a damn shame.
"Green manure" is the best fertalizer and commpred to the poison made from fossil fuels is very, very inexpensive. The price of oil based fertalizer had skyrocketed, which of course raises the price of food crops.
One of the best (green manures) is a mixture of alfalfa seeds and (inoculated) soy bean seeds. After it has grown to a height of about eight to ten inches, just plow it in, or for a small garden turn it in or use a roto-tiller.
That is "green manure" and is a great soil builder which is also non polluting.
There are other plants which are also good, fava beans, etc, but alfalfa and soy beans are the best in my opinion and adding lots of earthworms is always very productive, along with a gaggle of geese if possible for some good shit.
I suppose it is too much trouble for most commercial farming. It's easier to just buy and spread the poison.
We just let the beds lie fallow, and grow clover over it for a season or two. Our garden is in the middle of overgrown hay fields which are now meadows. The nitrogen fixing/gathering of clover is well known and is used in organic farming, and old fashioned farming. The goats love it as well.
Yes, the nitrogen fixing of alfalfa, soybeans, clover, along with the gain in organic matter, will someday take over nitrogen fertilization from our current fossil fuel sources. The problem with this practice in more northern regions is that growing seasons are short in order to delay planting until after the 'green manure' has grown and been worked in. In addition, horsepower is needed to work the plant material into the soil. If a year of fallow is used, then the land provides zero food that season. With a growing world population this practice, if used everywhere, would halve food production. Of course there is still the problem of supplying enough phosphorus, potassium and micro-nutrients.
I beleive it is far better to rotate the crop land and put half into, grow the alfalfa, soy beans, clover, allow livestock to graze in those fields and then plow it in, instead of using fossil fuel fertalizer.. Alfalfa's deep roots will bring out the necessary nutrients needed for healthy foods... We can get our potassium from banannas and other food sources.,, along with cesium 137 from Japan's Fukushima power plant..
The problem begins in a few decades or a century or two. "Alfalfa's deep roots" cannot magically create nutrients forever. When the last bits of potassium, etc. are used up, the plants will grow very poorly. Having livestock as part of the equation will help the situation, but unless the animal manure yields as many nutrients as is taken from the land, there will be a net decline.
You're quite right, which is why the system of plant it, spray it with fertilizers, let it run off into the rivers, eat it, let it go into the commode and into the rivers all into the ocean, that whole system is going down. We're simultaneously undermining the nutrient pumps, like salmon returning to spawn, that return nutrients from the ocean. The only way we're getting by with this is using the energy from fossil fuels which is dwindling.
The only way we can get right with this ecosystem is to start closing these loops. Proper aquaculture combined with vegetable crops can cut the run-off. Also, as mind-blowing as it is to westerners, we have to learn to deal with returning our own bodily wastes to natural systems to break down as quickly as possible rather than let it pile up at a treatment plant and then go to the ocean. The time for fertilizers synthesized from oil and transported on gas is already ending.
Fava beans are amazing. There are farms nearby where I volunteer, and we don't achieve fertility by adding chemicals, but by cultivating relationships between diverse plant species. Periodically we move through and find fava bean plants that have grown high and are near flowering, and we clip them to half-height and bury that nitrogen-rich leaf and stalk in the soil. In addition to all the composting we're doing, the soil is becoming rich and very alive. In a few more years we can expect a great deal of food output.
Nature does not stockpile either food or waste. Every resource it has is immediately set upon by those species that can move it along its chain. A field of "weeds" will not let a drop of sunlight reach the earth without hitting a leaf, and its fertility is all in play and continually building. One day we'll realize our monocultured crops with all their fragility and maintenance demands are crude, not the ecosystems that took eons to find their balance.
Aquaculture, the raising of fish, is done by increasing the fertility of the water by adding nutrients, and to keep dead zones from happening due to oxygen depletion, they aerate the water. It doesn't take all that much added air pumped in under the water through fine sieves, to add enough oxygen to keep the water healthy for aquatic life. Why is this not being done as an emergency measure?
Windfarms along the Gulf, located out in the water, could provide the power for the air pumps which would work when there was enough wind. No need to be constant. This really works; it is standard practice. That would help the Gulf region recover better than anything that has been done so far.
Sounds like a good idea. It works in my aquarium. There is no shortage of imagination, only of ways for corporations to make money from it
But how does that compare in:
a) Expense.
b) Complexity.
c) Benefits.
To simply requiring Organic farming methods that would eliminate much of the problem and utilizing the human and animal wastes of the cities to build back up the soil quality and further knock down the pollution?
Remaining run-off can be mitigated with "filter plantings" of plants and integrated fungal mycelium along river and stream edges.
The Dead Zones are the fault of Industrial Ag and wasteful treatment of excreta from people and animals.
But clever scheme.
Imagine such set-ups as "oases", perhaps surrounding an artificial reef, and you might just be really on to something. The Gulf Dead Zone (and most others) is too big to aerate entirely. And even if we went to Best Practices for Ag and "waste" tomorrow, the run-off would cause dead zones for years to come (there's just that much fertilizer in some of these chemically-sterilized feilds!).
I'd love to see a University or some Greenwashing Corporation set up a few such "oases", just for the positivity of the thing.
But Organic Ag and utilizing "wastes" are the big solutions here.
-matti.
-