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Dead Zones World Oceans - Politics, Business, Civil, History - Posted: 14th Feb, 2017 - 1:18pm
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Dead Zones In World Oceans
This is a topic that hasn't really hit the mainstream media, but is a growing threat to the ocean habitat. The first article is from 2004, before the current frenzy of global warming issues, and discusses pollution and runoff from agriculture being the main culprits (it does mention global warming near the end, but the cause initially is blamed on other things). More recent articles, of course, have to mention global warming at the forefront to keep that particular topic fresh in the public eye.
From msnbc.com:
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| 150 'dead zones' counted in oceans U.N. report warns of nitrogen runoff killing fisheries msnbc.com staff and news service reports updated 11:12 a.m. PT, Mon., March. 29, 2004 The number of oxygen-deprived "dead zones" in the world's oceans has been increasing since the 1970s and is now nearly 150, threatening fisheries as well as humans who depend on fish, the U.N. Environment Program announced Monday in unveiling its first-ever Global Environment Outlook Year Book. These "dead zones" are caused by an excess of nitrogen from farm fertilizers, sewage and emissions from vehicles and factories. In what experts call a "nitrogen cascade," the chemical flows untreated into oceans and triggers the proliferation of plankton, which in turn depletes oxygen in the water. While fish might flee this suffocation, slow moving, bottom-dwelling creatures like clams, lobsters and oysters are less able to escape. ... Toepfer noted that 146 dead zones - most in Europe and the U.S. East Coast - range from under a square mile to up to 45,000 square miles. "Unless urgent action is taken to tackle the sources of the problem," he said, "it is likely to escalate rapidly." The program noted that some of the earliest recorded dead zones were in Chesapeake Bay, the Baltic Sea, Scandinavia's Kattegat Strait, the Black Sea and the northern Adriatic Sea. The most infamous zone is in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi River dumps fertilizer runoff from the Midwest. |
https://www.msnbc.msn.com/
Wikipedia notes that the condition seems to be reversible, although an area of the Black Sea may have had a naturally occurring Dead Zone for "millenia":
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| In the 1970s, marine dead zones were first noted in areas where intensive economic use stimulated "first-world" scientific scrutiny: in the U.S. East Coast's Chesapeake Bay, in Scandinavia's strait called the Kattegat, which is the mouth of the Baltic Sea and in other important Baltic Sea fishing grounds, in the Black Sea, (which may have been anoxic in its deepest levels for millennia, however) and in the northern Adriatic. ........ Reversal of dead zones Dead zones are reversible. The Black Sea dead zone, previously the largest dead zone in the world, largely disappeared between 1991 and 2001 after fertilizers became too costly to use following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of centrally planned economies in Eastern and Central Europe. Fishing has again become a major economic activity in the region.[7] While the Black Sea "cleanup" was largely unintentional and involved a drop in hard-to-control fertilizer usage, the U.N. has advocated other cleanups by reducing large industrial emissions.[7] From 1985-2000, the North Sea dead zone had nitrogen reduced by 37% when policy efforts by countries on the Rhine River reduced sewage and industrial emissions of nitrogen into the water. Other cleanups have taken place along the Hudson River[8] and San Francisco Bay.[1] The chemical Aluminium sulfate can be used to reduce phosphates in water.[3] |
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Post Date: 14th Feb, 2017 - 1:18pm / Post ID: #
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Dead Zones In World Oceans History & Civil Business Politics
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TOPIC: Dead Zones In World Oceans