What is the Gulf of Mexico “dead zone”?
By Russell McLendon. Mother Nature News.com Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 9:30 AM EST Mississippi River is America’s aquatic aorta, pumping life through 2,350 miles of U.S. heartland. Its network of tributaries covers more than 1.2 million square miles, drains water from 30 states and is the third-largest river basin on Earth, behind only the Amazon and the Congo. But thanks to a confluence of factors, the Mississippi has also become an accomplice in the deaths of countless shrimp, crabs and other sea life. As the river empties its contents into the Gulf of Mexico, it inadvertently feeds the area’s annual “dead zone” — a low-oxygen, underwater wasteland that flares each spring and fades each winter. The gulf dead zone is the largest in the United States and second-largest of more than 400 worldwide, a total that has grown exponentially since the 1960s, according to a 2008 study. Smaller dead zones have appeared in other American waterways such as Lake Erie, Chesapeake Bay, Long Island Sound and
