By JANET McCONNAUGHEY/ AP Mar. 22, 2018 NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone” will be an unwanted summer visitor for decades, Canadian scientists say. They say the oxygen-starved patch would persist even if farmers could immediately end all fertilizer runoff. An area with too little oxygen to support marine life [...]

The Shell Oil Endowed Chair in Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at Louisiana State University Nancy N. Rabalais speaks on a growing concern to the Gulf of Mexico, a hypoxic zone where organisms struggle to survive. Sam Greene/Iowa State Daily By Brian Mackley / Iowa State Daily March 20, 2018 Leading researcher for [...]

Photo courtesy of Mike Reese Andy McGlashen / Ensia March 20, 2018 Sometime soon — maybe this year, maybe next — biologist Jeffrey Glassberg expects to say goodbye to the Poweshiek skipperling. The endangered, orange-and-brown butterfly is one of several species in the Upper Midwest’s prairies on the slippery slope toward extinction. In the [...]

GULF OF MEXICO RESEARCH INITIATIVE MARCH 20, 2018 Researchers analyzed dissolved organic carbon from water column samples collected in five regions to establish baseline data about its relative persistence and cycling in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The team found that the Mississippi River exports large amounts of dissolved organic carbon with an anthropogenic 14C [...]

By Todd C. Frankel / The Washington Post March 14, 2018 A picaresque tour of infrastructure reveals a struggle for control all along America’s great river, full of questions about what it once was, doubts about what it will become and who will pay for any of it. ALONG THE RIVER — The Mississippi runs the [...]

By Stacey Plaisance and Kevin McGill / AP News March 8, 2018 NORCO, La. (AP) — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began opening part of a 1930s flood control structure northwest of New Orleans on Thursday to divert water from a rising Mississippi River into nearby Lake Pontchartrain, a move that eases pressure [...]

Photo courtesy of Kathleen Pozarycki By Maria Dolan / Ensia March 5, 2018 On a blustery January day at Seahurst Park, a tree-fringed shoreline in the town of Burien just south of Seattle, Jason Toft searches for a promising beach log among the many specimens at hand. Beachgoers sit or climb on top [...]

Flower Garden reef, credit Kristine DeLong By STEVE HARDY | The Advocate> March 2, 2018 Over the years, diving to her beloved coral reefs in the Florida Keys began to feel more and more to Kristine DeLong like visiting a cherished older relative in hospice care. But the first time she saw [...]

A shrimp boat heads out from Point Cocodrie, La. Photo Credit: JC Winkler photo. John DeSantis / National Fisherman February 8, 2018 Gulf of Mexico shrimp fishermen are looking at 2018 with a mixture of apprehension and hope. There is apprehension because the past year’s record is not good. There is hope [...]