America’s coastal waters are increasingly becoming “dead zones” for marine life, posing both economic and environmental hazards for the country.

 

An assessment by federal, state and private scientists assembled by the White House found the number of dead zones in U.S. coastal waters has expanded 30-fold over the last 50 years, although globally the number has grown only 10-fold. The discharge of pollution, in particular wastewater and fertilizer runoff, off the coasts has created more blooms of algae and other bacteria that consume large amounts of oxygen from the ocean, leaving little left for fish and other species.

 

Dead zones have been located along the Atlantic coastline from Florida’s Biscayne Bay north to Boston Harbor. Farm runoff has produced one of the largest dead zones off the coast of Texas and Louisiana. About 20 dead zones have been found off California, Oregon and Washington, and another two exist in the Great Lakes.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Oxygen-Starved “Dead Zones” in U.S. Waters Growing, Report Warns (by John Solomon, Center for Public Integrity)

Scientific Assessment of Hypoxia in U.S. Coastal Waters (Interagency Working Group on Harmful Algal Blooms, Hypoxia, and Human Health) (pdf)