Max Freund / The Gazette
2 December 2018
The hypoxic, or low-oxygen, mass of water in Louisiana coastal waters west of the Mississippi River is often called the dead zone because fish, shrimp and other species that can swim away do because there’s too little oxygen to survive.
The size of the dead zone has been measured for years. This interactive allows you to explore the size of the dead zone and how it has changed betwee 2012 – 2018.
The Gulf Dead Zone Through the Years
The hypoxic, or low-oxygen, mass of water in Louisiana coastal waters west of the Mississippi River is often called the dead zone because fish, shrimp and other species that can swim away do because there’s too little oxygen to survive.
The red area denotes water with less than 2 milligrams per liter of oxygen, the operational definition of hypoxia. The yellow area is anything between 2 mg/l and up to 9 mg/l in shallow water.
Click through the years listed to see the size of the “dead zone” for that specfic year.
Source: N.N. Rabalais (LUMCON/LSU) and R.E. Turner (LSU), funding from NOAA. Leslie Smith, Your Ocean Consulting LLC
