2019 Shelfwide Cruise
What is hypoxia?
Hypoxia, or low oxygen, is an environmental phenomenon where the concentration of dissolved oxygen in the water column decreases to a level that can no longer support living aquatic organisms. Hypoxic areas, or “Dead Zones,” have increased in duration and frequency across our planet’s oceans since first being noted in the 1970s.
The largest hypoxic zone currently affecting the United States, and the second largest hypoxic zone worldwide, is the northern Gulf of Mexico adjacent to the Mississippi River.
Gulf hypoxia in the news:
Worldʼs Oceans Are Losing Oxygen Rapidly, Study Finds
Kendra Pierre-Louis / The New York Times 7 December 2019 The world’s oceans are gasping for breath, a report issued Saturday at the annual global climate talks in Madrid has concluded. The report represents the [...]
Midwestern Farm Runoff Creates Headache For Louisiana Shrimpers
Travis Lux / New Orleans Public Radio 17 October 2019 It’s only midmorning, but shrimper Thomas Olander is already calling it quits for the day in a small bayou in St. Mary Parish, on the [...]
Missouri Farmers Try To Reduce Runoff, But Cleaning Gulf Dead Zone May Take Decades
Eli Chen / St. Louis Public Radio 17 October 2019 When corn and soybean farmer Kenny Reichard stopped plowing some of his fields in northern Missouri in 1982, other farmers told him that it was [...]
Mississippi Beaches Have Been Vacant For Two Months As A Toxic Algae Bloom Lurks Offshore
Rocky Kistner / HuffPost ENVIRONMENT 08 September 2019 An algal bloom in the Gulf is devastating coastal businesses. Ship Island Excursions has survived hurricanes, global recessions, a world war and a host of economic challenges [...]
Polluting Farmers Should Pay
Catherine Kling / New York Times 26 August 2019 Dr. Kling is an environmental economist at Cornell University. Fertilizer runoff is making us sick. States can step in to regulate farmers. This year’s dead zone in [...]
Too Much of a Good Thing is ….
TUWaterWays Water News and More from the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law & Policy 23 August 2019 If a bit of something is good for you then surely a lot of it has to [...]
Large 2019 dead zone in Gulf of Mexico
Deanna Conners / EarthSky 16 August 2019 This year’s Gulf of Mexico dead zone of oxygen-depleted waters is the 8th largest ever recorded. A dead zone of oxygen-depleted waters forms every summer in the Gulf of Mexico [...]