Coastal “Dead Zones” Threaten US Waters
As reported on www.signonsandiego.com:
The number of dead zones in U.S. coastal waters has increased dramatically in the past 50 years, according to a federal report released Friday by the Office of Science and Technology Policy in Washington, D.C.
The inter-agency assessment said that incidents of hypoxia — a condition in which oxygen levels drop so low that fish and other animals are stressed or killed — have risen nearly 30-fold since 1960. A dead zone in San Diego Bay, first documented in the 1980s, was part of the analysis.
Dead zones were detected in nearly half of the 647 waterways assessed for the new report, including the Gulf of Mexico , home to one of the largest such zones in the world. The impact of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill on oxygen levels in the Gulf of Mexico was not assessed because it occurred after the report was written.
Read entire article at www.signonsandiego.com
