

Huge 'Dead Zone' Predicted in Gulf of Mexico - teawithcarl
http://www.livescience.com/37534-huge-dead-zone-expected.html

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benjamincburns
It's easy to create a market for exploiting the environment, especially when
the individual contribution to the whole of the exploitation is small. Sadly
it's very difficult to create a market for preservation, especially when the
individual impact is just as small.

I ask this non-rhetorically: how the hell does anyone turn that on its head,
especially without government involvement?

The Ocean Research and Conservation Association is a nonprofit that's trying
to promote the visibility of this problem (hypoxia caused by harmful blooms).
They're doing this through the use of very low cost in situ sensor networks
[1] and broad spectrum toxicology assays [2]. It's headed by Dr. Edie Widder
[3], the scientist who got the first footage of the giant squid on last year's
Discovery Channel cruise.

In combination with measuring physical/chemical parameters, they can
automatically measure biological parameters of the environment. They've done
this by miniaturizing and cost-reducing bathyphotometer [4] technology.

To the best of my very limited knowledge _nobody_ else is looking at the
problem this way. Everybody else measures physical/chemical parameters, and
either infer what's happening to the biology, or they do point or small area
biological sampling on an infrequent basis. And because it's so damn expensive
there's always a big tradeoff between temporal and spatial resolution. With
techniques like that everything is aggregate and there's little ability to tie
specific action to specific consequences, let alone enforce any kind of
feedback loop.

One of ORCA's biggest goals is to create a realtime water health gradient map
that's promoted to and accessible by the general public. In a perfect world
this would be used on the news right alongside the weather report.

I hate to cast a light of negativity but frankly I doubt they'll ever pull
this off. Not because of lack of technical ability or people with the passion
to do the work, but because of lack of stable funding. What's crazy is their
technology is downright _cheap_ , especially compared to the magnitude of the
problem. If they could ever pull together the funding to engineer for
manufacturability and do a full volume run, it'd be orders of magnitude less
expensive.

I freely admit that I suck at marketing, so the best I can offer is a
shameless plea. If this problem is important to you do something to solve it.
Read up on nutrient limiting and how it impacts hypoxia. Find a polite way to
tell your neighbor that their super green lawn might be sucking the life out
of the waterways. Spend a bit more to buy your meat and produce from farms
that limit runoff. If you have loose change, donate to organizations like ORCA
or perhaps to someone more local to you.

1:
[http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/kilroy_technical.cfm](http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/kilroy_technical.cfm)
2:
[http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/fast.cfm](http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/fast.cfm)
3:
[http://www.ted.com/speakers/edith_widder.html](http://www.ted.com/speakers/edith_widder.html)
4:
[http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/biolum_study.cfm](http://www.teamorca.org/cfiles/biolum_study.cfm)

Disclosure: I'm a former ORCA employee, but otherwise I'm no longer
affiliated.

Edit:

Bathyphotometer link [4] refers to a larger, more expensive model Edie
designed for the US Navy. See edited [1] for reference to smaller cost-reduced
version.

~~~
newbie12
This dead zone is, in large measure, the result of US agriculture and ethanol
subsidies, which encourage expanded and more intensive production than would
otherwise exist.

~~~
benjamincburns
In the case of the Mississippi outflow I'm with you to an extent. There's no
doubt in my mind that agriculture runoff is the biggest contributor.
Unfortunately removing agriculture subsidies won't fix the problem.

A number of people in the Chesapeake basin point the finger at chicken and pig
farms in the region due to their controversial use of manure lagoons [1]. To
the best of my knowledge these industries aren't heavily subsidized like corn
and soy.

Then there's the whole issue of baselining. What's normal for the Mississippi
river outflow? We've been observing the impacts to the fisheries there and the
Chesapeake for hundreds of years, but we've only been measuring DO for a few
decades and DO is far from the only thing that impacts fisheries. Further, the
Mississippi dumps a ton of relatively still water that's full of tannins
directly into the relatively still and warm gulf. I'm nowhere near qualified
to say this conclusively, but I'd bet there have been yearly cycles of hypoxia
there for millennia. Does this multiply or dampen our impacts?

This is a crazy complex multi-headed monster that looks completely different
in every region it inhabits. For every one of these massive hypoxic regions
there's a ton of other smaller ones. Next time you're bored take a look at the
waterways in your area on Google maps, especially where small local canals or
drainage ditches empty into larger bodies of water. Then go look at the
topography of the area and try to back-of-the-envelope account for what all is
pouring out of there. Then go do that for a completely different region. The
diversity if nutrient inputs is insane.

The only reliable long-term way I can see to fix the problem is to get people
to understand the impacts of their actions, and to associate those impacts
with the things that they buy, consume, and produce. When you flush the toilet
your poop goes somewhere. The same is true with your lawn clippings, farm
waste, fertilizers, antibiotics, birth control, etc.

1:
[http://nc.water.usgs.gov/flood/floods99/photos/IMG003.html](http://nc.water.usgs.gov/flood/floods99/photos/IMG003.html)

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mjn
Some sources of more information, for those interested:

Summary of the mechanisms behind hypoxia (site also includes data sets and
other information):
[http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/Overview/](http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/Overview/)

NOAA Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Watch:
[http://www.ncddc.noaa.gov/hypoxia/](http://www.ncddc.noaa.gov/hypoxia/)

Interactive map of eutropic and hypoxic zones worldwide, w/ data set from
2011:
[http://www.wri.org/project/eutrophication/map](http://www.wri.org/project/eutrophication/map)

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mmagin
This article doesn't mention it, but I've heard the suggestion that far more
of the runoff is from over-fertilized suburban lawns than from agriculture.

At least commercial agriculture tends to be a bit more concerned about
wasteful inputs, etc. (At least where subsidies haven't distorted it too
much.)

But I see some incredibly excessively perfectly green lawns which are such a
waste of resources unless you're playing golf or lawn bowling.

~~~
minikites
Lawns in general are goddamn stupid idea. The most common irrigated crop in
the United States? Turf grass. They're a huge waste of water and a huge waste
of fertilizer and both of those have very negative impacts on our immediate
environment.

~~~
viggity
Excuse me, but a huge portion of the US population lives in places that do not
have water scarcity problems. I live in Iowa, we have more water than we know
what to do with. Irrigating my lawn doesn't hurt the environment or any of my
neighbors. Not everyone in the US lives in the southwest.

~~~
minikites
I bet you irrigate your lawn with potable water which takes energy to purify.
So you're wasting clean water to maintain a furry green carpet (try some
FieldTurf or native plants) that serves no purpose since it doesn't feed you
(grow some vegetables) or act as that good of a carbon sink.

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ynniv
You actually wanted:

[http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20130618_deadzone.h...](http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20130618_deadzone.html)

[http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/News/default.asp?XMLFilename=2013...](http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/News/default.asp?XMLFilename=201306191312.xml)

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epoxyhockey
I'm curious if the dispersants used in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010
may have been a contributing factor in addition to fertilizers and
agricultural runoff? Or should I consider the Deepwater Horizon aftereffects
_water under the bridge_ by now?

~~~
clarky07
FTA: "Last year's dead zone was smaller than average"

I'm guessing that means that the oil spill isn't a contributing factor, and
it's just the excess rain and subsequent runoff this year.

~~~
benjamincburns
Hypoxic regions are caused by an influx of various nutrient-limited organisms
(hence why fertilizer is bad) which trigger a feeding cycle that destabilizes
and ultimately kills off the oxygen-producing organisms in the impacted
region. Once they're gone, carnivorous inverts which survive well in low
oxygen environments move in and stabilize the environment to its newly-barren
state.

I don't know for certain, but I'd guess that the chemical dispersants actually
contributed to the reduction of hypoxia, since it introduced a new limiting
factor for the organisms which start the cycle. That said, I'm sure
dispersants aren't biased in what they poison, so it's important to note that
this is probably a positive-looking indicator masking devastatingly negative
phenomenon.

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zxcdw
Is something like this an accepted tradeoff when using fertilizers for
farming?

~~~
ValG
Not really. This would be a prime example of a negative externality, or a cost
which results from an activity or transaction and which affects an otherwise
uninvolved party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit.[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality)

~~~
joonix
Now fishermen will suffer so farmers can pull a profit. It's kind of the most
simple form of unfairness. The kind that small children easily identify and
question.

~~~
dsuth
It's confusing that the only externality considered in the article or in the
HN comments so far is "effect on fisheries".

Coastal regions are (typically) teaming with life of all kinds. I can live
without people getting fresh fish quite as often as they're used to. I can't
swallow destroying entire ecosystems out of wilful ignorance quite so easily.

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tobykier
so will the farmers get the shit sued out of them like BP did?

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NatCrodo
Now we know how things affect the environment, I'm curious on what people will
do about it.

