The giant "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico

Gizmodo reports that American environmentalists found in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of the United States a huge "dead zone". According to them, this Bay area, with an area of twenty three thousand square kilometers, devoid of oxygen and therefore became a killer for underwater animal world.

Scientists see the reason of ecological disaster in a huge drain in a sea of agricultural waste via the Mississippi river. The emergence of "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico has already become commonplace, but the new area was surprised and frightened ecologists because it exceeds the allowed limit, once set by the organization of the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force (the fight against pollution of the Mississippi river) almost five times.

Why "dead zone" is written in quotation marks? The fact is, the scientists explain that she is dead is only for the animal world: the cause of the hypoxia (decrease of oxygen in water) fish and other marine life cannot exist in such water and quickly die. And the lack of oxygen caused by contact with waters of the Gulf numerous biological wastes, which cause massive growth of algae. The death and subsequent decomposition of aquatic plants and leads to depletion of oxygen in water.

"Dead" or hypoxic zone of the Gulf of Mexico is not unique, say scientists, in the world there are about four hundred, all of them small, that is even not going to any comparison with the current trouble in America. And the waters of the Bay near the US demonstrate the further expansion of such zones. Of course, the Mississippi river would pollute the waters of the Bay of agricultural waste, but agriculture is developing intensively not only in the United States, and of rivers with biological waste from the fields to the sea: a ubiquitous phenomenon in the world. But the big "dead zone" - a phenomenon for the seas and bays of the rarest.

Conspiracy theorists see the main reason for this sad phenomenon to the underwater world of the Gulf of Mexico is not agricultural waste, and flesh-eating bacteria, in particular bacteria Cynthia that American scientists synthesized in the laboratory, and then without a proper study of the consequences of such a step, in 2010, were released in the Gulf. Released to fight the oil, which due to an accident caused by the company "British Petroleum" spill then, the Gulf of Mexico in large numbers. Cynthia soon realized that the animal underwater world where "good" oil, and therefore quickly switched to it. By the way, American scientists still have not found a way to deal with this flesh-eating bacterium, and therefore its triumphal March in the Gulf of Mexico continues...

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»