A group of American scientists discovered that a large dead zone has formed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of the United States - an area of oxygen-deprived water with an area of about 23 thousand square kilometers.
According to researchers, it was formed due to agricultural waste entering the bay through the Mississippi River. This is reported by the Gizmodo edition.
Dead spots are common in the Gulf of Mexico. Their size is on average 15 thousand square kilometers. In 2002, researchers registered one of the largest oxygen-free regions, with an area of 22,000 square kilometers.
However, a new dead zone that appeared this year broke that record. It is 4.6 times higher than the permissible limit set by experts from the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force, which aims to reduce pollution in the Mississippi River.
A decrease in the concentration of oxygen in water (this condition is called hypoxia) occurs due to the fact that the abundance of nutrients in waters contaminated with fertilizers and soil particles leads to massive growth of algae.
The death and decomposition of the latter is the cause of the depletion of oxygen and the death of sea creatures. There are over 400 hypoxic zones in the world, but the Gulf of Mexico site is the largest.
Fish in the dead zone dies