Ocean 'dead zones' now top 400, experts find

[Chuck]

If this continues, all seafood may be as plentiful as caviar.

AP - August 14, 2008

This does not look a natural cyclical pattern, but an escalating man-made one...black dots are dead marine zones - Ed

Washington - Like a chronic disease wasting a body, ocean "dead zones" with too little oxygen for marine life are spreading around the globe, researchers reported Thursday.

The experts counted 405 dead zones in 2007 — a third more than their 1995 survey.
"The number of dead zones has approximately doubled each decade since the 1960s," the researchers wrote in the journal Science… [Read More]

[Aether glider]

You can thank ethanol for a large part of the gulf of Mexico zone. Since corn requires more fertilizer per acre, the runoff is killing parts of the Mississippi river into the ocean.

[PTDixieGal]

And according to some, ethanol is supposed to be eco-friendly.

Eco-friendly my foot.

[Tochatihu]

Thanks for the post because it led me to a very good (free) download:

ftp://ftp.fao.org/agl/agll/docs/fertusebycrop.pdf

124 pages long (warning)

It does not discuss corn, but a medium to high rate for that crop would be 100 kg/ha (from other sources). The highest rate in the FAO document is for bananas (p.74); 470 kg/ha NPK total which is more than 400 for N alone (trust me).

Corn is indeed the biggest "N consumer" in the US, driven by total planted area, not the dose rate as such.

These dead zones are a big deal. As are the energy requirements to produce the fertilizer, and the nitrous oxide released from wet, fertilized fields. Yes it's laughing gas, but also absorbs infrared very strongly. Not a really good thing to put in the atmosphere.

There are a lot of mouths to feed though, and getting that done with less energy and air and water pollution remains a daunting task. Any of your kids interested in careers in ecology? Doesn't pay as well as computers or pro basketball, but it needs doing. Really.

DAS

[Project01SC2]

This definately has to suck to people that like fish and seafood, thankfully I never been able to stand the smell or taste of that stuff. On a serious note, it would be nice if we, as a whole, could get these areas cleaned up and figure out ways to produce our needs with less polution. For example, from the mining process to final product of batteries to the delivery of this countries hybrids. I'm sorry but we are talking about some seriously major polution. This is why I can't wait for the big guys to get off of there tails and start building hybrids here in the US and hopefully mandait some clean refineries for the nickle closer to home.

[Chuck]

The map may be too small, but look at the dead zones that can't support sea life:

• The entire US Gulf Coast
• The entire US East Coast from Florida to Maine
• Europe from Normandy, the British Isles, North Sea, and much of the Baltic
• The southern half of Japan and South Korea
• At least a third of the US West Coast

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Aether glider

You can thank ethanol for a large part of the gulf of Mexico zone. Since corn requires more fertilizer per acre, the runoff is killing parts of the Mississippi river into the ocean.

Wrong twice. It's not that corn requires more fertilizer, it's that cheap artificial fertilizers have gotten many farmers in the habit of dumping far more than needed on their fields. And any excess added to grow more corn for ethanol production has hardly had time to make its way to the sea yet.

Hummm... Now that I think about it, maybe that's wrong three ways. Haven't we been hearing a lot about how ethanol production increased the demand for corn, driving up the price for corn used for food & animal feed? But if the amount of corn grown had increased all that much, the price wouldn't have risen.

[azraelswrd]

The map on the linked article is bigger and very depressing. Human activity has exacerbated pre-existing hypoxic regions and when you see it in black -- wow.

Not all of the corn supplied has met the demand so the price didn't fall.

[Vooch]

next time you fertilize your lawn or use round-up - think about it - you are also helping to kill the oceans

[wdb]

Originally Posted by Delta Flyer

The map may be too small, but look at the dead zones that can't support sea life:

• The entire US Gulf Coast
• The entire US East Coast from Florida to Maine
• Europe from Normandy, the British Isles, North Sea, and much of the Baltic
• The southern half of Japan and South Korea
• At least a third of the US West Coast

And yet people surf fish from east coast shorelines all the time, and they even catch stuff.

That map is too small, and the dots indicating "dead zones" are too large and run together. No need to spread panic about the entire coastline not supporting acquatic life. Trust me, jump in the water off most of the NJ coast and a crab will bite you or a jellyfish will sting you. Or both.