The numbers are in.
The 2021 Gulf of Mexico Hypoxic Zone, or Dead Zone, an area of low oxygen that can kill
fish and marine life near the bottom of the sea, measures six thousand three hundred and
thirty four square miles.
This year's dead zone is larger than the average measured over the past five years.
This year's measurement is equivalent to more than four million acres of habitat potentially
unavailable to fish and bottom species.
This “dead zone” begins innocently enough.
Farmers use fertilizers and manure to increase the output of their crops so that we can have
more food on our tables and more food to sell to the rest of the world.
But it is this excess agricultural nutrient pollution combined with urban runoff and wastewater
that brings excessive amounts of nutrients into waterways that feed the Mississippi River.
The Mississippi River is like a drainage system for your street, but it connects 31 U.S. states
and even parts of Canada.These nutrients are ultimately funneled into the Gulf of Mexico,
sometimes traveling more than a 1,000 miles downstream to start a chain of events in the
Gulf that turns deadly.
The nutrients fuel large algal blooms that then sink, decompose, and deplete the water
of oxygen.
This is hypoxia, when oxygen in the water is so low it can no longer sustain marine
life in bottom or near bottom waters—literally, a dead zone.
And it happens every summer.
When the water reaches this hypoxic state, fish and shrimp leave the area and anything
that can't escape like crabs, worms, and clams die.
If the amount of pollution entering the Gulf isn't reduced, the dead zone will continue
to wreak havoc on the ecosystem and threaten some of the most productive fisheries in the
world.
What are States doing to help?
A variety of innovative technologies and practices are being implemented across the Mississippi
River watershed to reduce nutrient pollution such as: technology that removes nutrients
from wastewater, practices on the land to limit nutrients entering into waterways, and
programs to support farmers in their efforts to implement conservation practices that protect
water quality.
There are even steps you can take at home, such as reducing erosion and excess runoff
from areas around your house, planting trees and other native plants in your yard,
and applying slow release fertilizers and only when needed.
Even though these efforts may take place far from the Gulf, they can still reduce the harmful
impact of the dead zone!