More corn for meat and ethanol, less habitat for Gulf fish By Tom Philpott, GRIST2 Aug 2010 As if the Deepwater Horizon disaster weren’t enough, this year’s dead zone is one of the largest ever.Graphic: Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium Deep in the Gulf of Mexico, plumes of dispersed oil linger, wreaking unknown damage on one of the [...]
Oil Spill Dispersants Shifting Ecosystem Impacts in Gulf, Scientists Warn By ELANA SCHOR of Greenwire, The NY Times July 30, 2010A seemingly feel-good story showed up this week on the nation's front pages and newscasts: The oil that befouled the Gulf of Mexico for 86 days is vanishing from the surface, leaving workers with little [...]
Scientists think Gulf can recover from massive oil spill By By Cain Burdeau and Seth Borenstein, Associated Press writersSaturday, August 07, 2010The Gulf of Mexico's impressive self-cleanup makes sense given its history and makeup. The Gulf regularly absorbs environmental insults: overfishing, trawlers raking sea floors, frequent hurricanes. And then there's the dead zone, an area starved [...]
Scientists think Gulf can recover By By SETH BORENSTEIN and CAIN BURDEAU (AP)6 August 2010BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — Want to know the future of the oil-stained Gulf of Mexico ecosystem? Look first to its muddy, polluted past. The recent ecological history of the Gulf gives scientists reason for hope. In an extensive survey of [...]
Uneasy feeling in gulf over next step By By Krissah Thompson and David A. Fahrenthold, WASHINGTON POSTMonday, Aug 9, 2010BURAS, LA. -- Obama administration officials promised Sunday to remain focused on the Gulf Coast -- punishing BP for the worst oil spill in U.S. history, and cleaning up what remains of the mess. But along [...]
Wake Up and See the Dead Zones! By Peter Hanlon, Research and Policy Analyst at Network for New Energy Choices, The Huffington Post30 July 2010NASA's Earth Observatory's "Image of the Day" blog is like a high-grade morning fix for nerdy armchair geographers (ahem). It takes a certain mindset to get excited each morning by an Uruguayan rainfall [...]
Massive 'Dead Zone' Threatens Gulf Marine Life By Morning Edition, National Public RadioAugust 3, 2010
The Other Gulf Stain By ANDREW C. REVKIN, The New York TimesAugust 2, 2010To the west of the oil slicks and fleets of vessels working to seal the BP well, another less invisible stain, mainly the result of vast amounts of nitrogen and other nutrients washing down the Mississippi River from agricultural lands upstream, has spread beneath the waters [...]
'Flounder jubilees' are nothing new By Bo Petersen, The Post and Courier Sunday, July 25, 2010They call them "flounder jubilees," odd happenstances when the fish come up into the shallows in masses and people gig them by the hundreds. A few Gulf of Mexico beach communities have a reputation for jubilees. And they're apparently not [...]
Myrtle 'dead zones' stir worries By Bo Petersen, The Post and Courier Sunday, July 25, 2010MYRTLE BEACH -- In the mid-August heat, fishermen began pulling in flounder after flounder on Springmaid Pier. But the fish weren't fighting. Susan Libes could see bottom- dwelling flounder in the surf below the pier. The marine science chemist was [...]