U.N.: Number of ocean 'dead zones' rise

[SoulManX]

WASHINGTON - Scientists have found 200 "dead zones" in the world's oceans — places where pollution threatens fish, other marine life and the people who depend on them. The United Nations report Thursday showed a 34 percent jump in the number of such zones from just two years ago.




Pollution-fed algae, which deprives other living marine life of oxygen, is the cause of most of the world's dead zones that cover tens of thousands of square miles of waterways. Scientists chiefly blame fertilizer and other farm run-off, sewage and fossil-fuel burning.
Those contain an excess of nutrients, particularly phosphorous and nitrogen, that cause explosive blooms of tiny plants known as phytoplankton. When they die, they sink to the bottom, where they are eaten by bacteria that use up the oxygen in the water.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061019/ap_on_sc/ocean_dead_zones

 

[Carcharodon]

WASHINGTON - Scientists have found 200 "dead zones" in the world's oceans — places where pollution threatens fish, other marine life and the people who depend on them. The United Nations report Thursday showed a 34 percent jump in the number of such zones from just two years ago.




Pollution-fed algae, which deprives other living marine life of oxygen, is the cause of most of the world's dead zones that cover tens of thousands of square miles of waterways. Scientists chiefly blame fertilizer and other farm run-off, sewage and fossil-fuel burning.
Those contain an excess of nutrients, particularly phosphorous and nitrogen, that cause explosive blooms of tiny plants known as phytoplankton. When they die, they sink to the bottom, where they are eaten by bacteria that use up the oxygen in the water.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061019/ap_on_sc/ocean_dead_zones

Pollution alone isn't the cause...it's the use of Nitrogen and Phosphorous (phosphate) enriched fertilizers that get caught in streams and runoff and travel to the ocean; this is largely the cause of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone out of the mouth of the Mississippi.

Sad that nobody else took notice of this stuff. Really is relevant the environmental health, and just plain interesting/weird.

 

[War Lord]

It's also caused by overfishing, which the Europeans are famous for.

 

[JLBats]

Damn those Europeans, this is all their fault.