Gulf of Mexico Sets a New Record for the World's Largest 'Dead Zone'

There's an unwanted record in the Gulf of Mexico: This year's "dead zone, " a largely human-caused phenomenon where there's too little oxygen to support marine life, is the biggest ever measured.

The Gulf of Mexico

The low-oxygen, or hypoxic , zone covers 8,776 square miles (22,720 square kilometers) — about the size of New Jersey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday. The area is more than 3 percent larger than the 2002 dead zone, the previous record.

"We predicted it would be large, and it is large," said scientist Nancy Rabalais, who has been measuring the dead zone since 1985.

She said the area was actually larger, but the July mapping cruise had to stop before reaching the western edge.

"The structure of the water column was changing, so I'm not sure how much larger it would have been," said Rabalais, of Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium .

"This large dead zone size shows that nutrient pollution, primarily from agriculture and developed land runoff in the Mississippi River watershed is continuing to affect the nation's coastal resources and habitats in the Gulf," NOAA said in a news release.

Read full article: Business Insider

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