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What is the Gulf of Mexico dead zone?

From red tides in the Atlantic to a furry blob in Alaska, seaweed seems to be invading the U.S. from all sides. But the country's worst algae onslaught, even after a quiet summer, still lingers at the mouth of the Mississippi.
By Russell McLendon
Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 9:30 AM EST
Read more: ALGAE, WATER POLLUTION

 
The 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 Puget Sound in recent years, as well as on a variety of global coastlines. Some are natural in origin, but many of the most visible and destructive ones are the results of human activity. And the lifeless expanses south of the Mississippi Delta have become their poster child.
 
The Gulf of Mexico dead zone is actually smaller this summer than scientists had expected — about 3,000 square miles, compared with predictions of up to 8,500 and a recent average of 6,000 — but it's also unusually dense and close to the surface, which could make it more severe, officials with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday. And recent trends, as well as ongoing agricultural practices upstream, suggest it's too early to celebrate the dead zone's demise just yet.
 

When algae attack

Dead zones are ecological disasters, but they're caused by an otherwise upstanding citizen: phytoplankton, the floating cornerstone of the ocean's food chain. Under normal circumstances, phytoplankton toil thanklessly below the surface, making life as we know it possible. They produce about half of the oxygen we breathe, and play crucial roles in ecosystems the world over.
 
But for all their benefits, phytoplankton aren't known for self-restraint — overfeed them and they'll suddenly surge out of control, forming huge "algal blooms" that can stretch for miles, often choking out other life. Sometimes they release a flood of toxins, like the devastating red tides plaguing New England this summer, and sometimes they're bizarre yet apparently benign, like the furry, 12-mile-long "blob" recently discovered off the north coast of Alaska (see video below).
 

 
Algae accumulations are common in many waterways around the planet, and a bloom doesn't necessary spell doom. The Alaska blob is now drifting out to sea with no visible harm done, and smaller blooms occasionally float down even small rivers and streams. But depending on the type and the amount of algae involved, a run-of-the-mill plankton party can quickly escalate into what's known as a "harmful algal bloom," or HAB.
 
Only a fraction of the world's algae species are toxic, but things get ugly when they get together. Probably the most notorious toxic algae are those responsible for red tide — rosy plumes that billow below the surface (see photo), soon followed by the stench of poisoned, rotting fish. The toxin usually irritates the eyes and skin of people who swim during red tides, and can even become airborne, creating a "stinging gas" that hovers over a beach. Other toxic algae may pass their poisons slowly up the food chain by bioaccumulation, causing ailments like ciguatera fish poisoning, which can involve nausea, vomiting and neurologic symptoms.
 
Nontoxic blooms are no saints either, since the large, slimy mats they generate often interfere with a wide range of coastal business, from the feeding habits of right whales and fishermen to the antics of would-be beach-goers. They can also smother coral reefs and seagrass beds, endangering the diverse animals living there, including some commercially important fish.
 
Not even the worst algae blooms, however, create hypoxic zones on their own. A true dead zone is a team effort — individual algae within a bloom die and rain into the depths below, where they're digested by deep-water bacteria, a process that consumes oxygen. Yet even with this sudden oxygen drain, wind-driven ocean churning normally stirs down enough oxygenated surface water to cure any temporary hypoxia. Certain natural conditions, namely warm weather and a layering of fresh and salty surface water, are often needed for a dead zone to form.
 
The northern Gulf of Mexico, of course, has plenty of both. Its dead zone grows in the summer because, since heat rises, warm surface waters and cooler bottom waters create a stable water column, discouraging the vertical churning that would carry down oxygen from above. In addition, the gulf is constantly being doused with freshwater from the Mississippi River, forming a fluid buffer layer on the surface that traps oxygen-depleted saltwater below (see illustration).
 

Highway to the dead zone

The biggest overall contributor to the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, however, is the entire Mississippi River Basin, which pumps an estimated 1.7 billion tons of excess nutrients into gulf waters each year, causing an annual algal feeding frenzy. Those nutrients come largely from agricultural runoff — soil, manure and fertilizers — but also from fossil-fuel emissions and various household and industrial pollutants.
 
Cars, trucks and power plants contribute to aquatic overnutrition by spitting out nitrogen oxides, but they represent "point source" pollutants, meaning their emissions come from discernible sources that can be easily monitored and regulated. Much more frustrating to control are nonpoint source pollutants, which comprise the lion's share of what's washing into the gulf. This ambiguous flood of generalized contamination flows from driveways, roads, roofs, sidewalks and parking lots into streams and rivers, but a substantial swath of it comes from large-scale farming in the Midwest. Nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich fertilizers are widely blamed for recent spikes, such as in 2002, of hypoxia in the gulf. (See the NOAA video below for more.) 
 

 
Fish aren't usually killed by the dead zone unless it traps them against the coast, since they can outswim the dropping oxygen levels and move somewhere else. The ones that get away could take a valuable coastal fishing industry with them, however, wreaking economic havoc on shore. The ones that stay may suffer even worse — carp that continuously live in the hypoxic zone have been found to have smaller reproductive organs, raising the prospect of population crashes alongside mass migrations.
 
Some bottom-dwelling creatures don't have the option of leaving the sea floor, making them the No. 1 casualty of the dead zone. Certain worms, crustaceans and other animals choke as the oxygen is all sucked away by bacteria, meaning they don't come back when the oxygen does; instead, a smaller number of short-lived species takes their place. Large snails, starfish and sea anemones largely disappeared from the dead zone 30 to 40 years ago. 
 

Keeping hypoxia at bay

The Mississippi River has briefly flowed backward before, during the 1811-'12 New Madrid earthquakes, and that might not sound so bad given all the pollution it's currently feeding into the gulf. The problem isn't the river itself, though, but what's in it. 
 
Regulating nonpoint source pollutants is difficult since they come from so many different places, and fears of cramping the Midwestern farming economy have helped forestall major regulations to control nutrient runoff. The EPA and several other federal and state agencies formed a dead zone task force, and the EPA's Gulf of Mexico Program hosted Iowa officials in Louisiana last year to award them for their efforts to reduce runoff. There are ways to combat existing nutrient pollution, such as planting wetlands or raising shellfish colonies to absorb nutrients, but many farmers are already making small changes on their own, like no-till planting or improved drainage systems. See the links below for more on dead zones and ways to reduce runoff:
 
Alaska algal bloom video courtesy North Slope Borough, Alaska
Dead zone video courtesy NOAA
Photos courtesy NASA, NOAA, USGS


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Comments(11)

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Posted By Brian - Wed, Jul 29 2009 at 11:20 AM EST

Other fixes

We straighten the flow of our streams and rivers too much. They need to be churned up more to oxygenate the water more allowing biological breakdowns to happen farther upstream and in greater quantity.

Posted By Anonymous - Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 11:48 PM EST

It All Goes Back to Cheap, Subsidized Corn

Read Michael Pollen's book - The Omnivore's Dilemna. We produce bushel after bushel of cheap, commoditized corn using industrial, petroleum fertilizer that runs into the river. Industry needs a cheap raw material to make packaged foods with. As usual, society foots the bill.

Posted By Timothy K. - Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 11:17 PM EST

interesting...

I never knew the algaecides I use in our pond contribute to so many problems downstream

Posted By Brady G.O. - Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 6:58 PM EST

Farms aren't the only contributors...

While they may be a major factor, farms aren't the only cause of this dead zone. The way most municipalities and developments manage their storm water retention systems also has a very significant effect.

Here is an article on the subject:
.... More

Posted By JOhnny MAck - Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 5:37 PM EST

Wow

OMgosh dude that is really messed up man!

RT
www.anon-web-tools.tk

Posted By Anonymous - Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 11:18 AM EST

cool

that is neat

Posted By Hannah S. - Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 11:13 AM EST

Gulf of Mexico

The past few summers that we've been to the beach, we've seen the effects of this dead zone, whether in the form of algae laden water or red tides that you aren't allowed to swim in. Good to know that someone is paying attention to it and that there is something that can be done.

Posted By Anonymous - Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 10:58 AM EST

Crawfish Boil Anyone?

This is the nastiest article I've ever seen! Not sure I'll be eating any fish coming from the Gulf of Mexico after reading this. With so many contributors to this mess, i don't see a viable option to fix it. It doesn't seem to be limited to just farming, but all industrial polluters of the Mississippi.

This problem will just get worse as time goes on unless there is a major movement to fix it!

Posted By Emma G. - Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 10:54 AM EST

Check out that Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone video

If you're still a bit confused (as I was), that second video embedded in the page explains the Dead Zone really well.

I understand that the absence of fish due to the dead zone is bad for the fishing communities in the area, but if the water is full of fertilizer run-off, etc., do we want to be eating those fish anyway?

@Momof2: I agree that as soon as we can clean up the polluted water, we'll get the fish back and have a healthier Earth and healthier bodies.

Posted By Momof2 - Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 10:11 AM EST

It all comes down to farms...

I've been hearing various people saying that "organic can't feed the world" and "agri-business farms are a must" but the reality is that their fertilizer and pesticides and god-knows-what is running down the rivers and into our major water systems....so we hurt ourselves several ways - eating pesticides, polluting our water, and destroying our fishing industry.

I wish I would be around in 200 years...historians aren't going to believe the various ways we worked at killing.... More

Posted By Barry W. - Tue, Jul 28 2009 at 9:45 AM EST

Whoa...

Very comprehensive piece about a little-known subject. Thanks, as always, for sharing.

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