By Sara Sneath | The Times-Picayune October 5, 2017 Researchers have measured the dead zone growing along the Louisiana and Texas coasts during the summer months since 1985. This year, one of those researchers carried a GoPro with him as he dove below the surface in the heart of the oxygen-deprived waters. In mid-August, Cameron [...]

By Irina Zhorov / WHYY September 29, 2017 Along a sleepy bayou, in the midst of the lacework of land and water that makes up the coast of Louisiana, Captain Jason Dempster unloads a shrimp boat. He’s spent the last 23 days at sea. Captain Jason Dempster mans a shrimp boat in the brackish [...]

"Largest" dead zone recorded in U.S. threatens marine life Air Date: 08/16/17 The largest dead zone ever recorded in the U.S. has appeared in the Gulf of Mexico. It is primarily caused by fertilizer and sewage runoff that eventually forces marine life to leave -- or suffocate and die. Jeff Glor reports. Watch Video [...]

World Events, Hope Dealers, The Dead Zone Originally aired: Aug 14, 2017 Guest: Nancy Rabalais, PhD, Professor, Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Shell Oil Endowed Chair in Oceanography/Wetland Sciences, Louisiana State University, Distinguished Research Professor, Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium The dead zone is a mass of water the size of New Jersey just off [...]

By The Times-Picayune Editorial Board August 6, 2017 Sixteen years after voluntary limits on fertilizer went into effect, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico this year is the largest since scientists began measuring it in the mid-1980s. The low-oxygen zone this year covers at least 8,776 square miles, which is as large as the state of New [...]

Advocate Editorial August 5, 2017 Much of Louisiana was built by the sediments brought down over millennia by the great Mississippi River, and it continues today to generate wealth in this country and state as one of the world’s great highways of trade. But being at the mouth of the Mississippi is not an unalloyed [...]

By Jenna Gallegos | The Washington Post August 4, 2017 Scientists just measured the largest dead zone ever recorded for the Gulf of Mexico, a whopping 8,776 square miles, massive enough to cover all of New Jersey. And only dramatic shifts in farming practices are likely to prevent even bigger problems in the future. Dead zones, which disrupt fishing [...]

By Ruairi Arrieta-Kenna | Vox August 3, 2017 The man-made problem is an environmental disaster and an economic threat. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Wednesdaythat this year’s “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is the largest ever measured. Stretching from the coast of Louisiana at the Mississippi River Delta westward to the [...]

Louisiana State University Media Center August 2, 2017 Shrinking the annual Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone down to the size of Delaware will require a 59 percent reduction in the amount of nitrogen runoff that flows down the Mississippi River from as far away as the Corn Belt. That’s the primary finding of a new [...]

By Casey Smith | National Geographic August 2, 2017 Scientists report the latest data from the Upper Gulf of Mexico, and the results aren’t good. This image of the Gulf of Mexico in the summer was created by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. Reds and oranges represent high [...]