Mindy Cooper / Environmental Monitor Summer 2018 Issue During the summer of 2017, researchers with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) and Louisiana State University mapped the largest dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico to date. The Gulf of Mexico meets the shorelines of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and western Florida and is home [...]

Graph and map showing dissolved oxygen levels Maryland Department of Natural Resources August 10, 2018 Heavy Rainfall and Sustained Winds Helped Produce Best Recorded Results Ever Due to extreme summer weather, dissolved oxygen conditions in Maryland’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay mainstem were the best ever observed in late July, reports the Maryland [...]

About 66 million years ago, an asteroid more than 10 kilometers wide struck Earth, as seen in this artist’s rendering. The impact did more than bring an end to the reign of the dinosaurs. According to new research, it also ushered in a period of rapid global warming that helped deplete oxygen from vast [...]

Fish are seen washed ashore on Sanibel Island. Bill Weir / CNN 8 August 2018 Off Sanibel Island, Florida (CNN) On a good day, a beach trip to Sarasota or a boat trip out of Fort Myers can be a sun-kissed adventure filled with relaxation and anticipation. These are not good days. The [...]

Daily Comet Editorial 2 August 2018 There are at least two ways of thinking about the dead zone that develops each summer in the Gulf of Mexico. The first, and most optimistic, is for us to tell ourselves that the dead zone is less than half the size this year than what researchers predicted. The [...]

Lead researcher Nancy Rabalais (left) works with a team member Friday to measure the Gulf of Mexico dead zone off the Louisiana coast. [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] By Keith Magill / Daily Comit 1 August 2018 Though smaller than expected, it still poses a major problem, researchers say. This summer's Gulf of [...]

Mark Schleifstein / The Time-Picayune 31 July 2018 The summertime low-oxygen "dead zone" along Louisiana's Gulf Coast is dramatically smaller in 2018 -- 2,720 square miles, or the size of the state of Delaware --  a team of researchers announced Tuesday (July 31). That's the fourth smallest dead zone since 1985, but it's still 50 [...]

The Advocate Faimon A. Roberts III / The Advocate 31 Jul 2018 Though it's still about the size of Delaware, the so-called "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico is much smaller than researchers were expecting this year. Scientists with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, or LUMCON, reported Tuesday that the 2018 zone [...]

NOAA News July 31, 2018 Persistently strong westerly winds and waves likely led to smaller than expected zone size NOAA-supported scientists have determined that this year’s Gulf of Mexico “dead zone”— an area of low oxygen that can kill fish and marine life — is approximately 2,720 square miles (7,040 square kilometers), an area about [...]

An aerial view of the Archipelago Sea, a coastal region of the Baltic. Beneath these seemingly pristine waters lies a coastal ecosystem in crisis due to low oxygen levels. Credit: Kari Mattila, Archipelago Research Institute Jenessa Duncombe / Eos 30 July 2018 Newly drilled cores from the Baltic Sea reveal 1,500 years of [...]