NOAA Leads National Workshop on Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone
On March 27-28, 2012, NOAA led the third annual Gulf of Mexico Research Coordination Meeting in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where all five NOAA line offices and numerous state, federal, and academic partners will update the science behind hypoxic or “dead” zones and identify remaining research and management gaps.
Nutrient pollution has caused most of the 300-plus dead zones recorded nationwide in the last 50 years, destroying habitat and threatening fisheries. Nutrients feed large blooms of algae that eventually die and fall to the bottom; their decay takes large amounts of oxygen from the water.
The largest U.S. dead zone forms every summer in the northern Gulf of Mexico, where NOAA has led research for more than 20 years and provided an Interagency Hypoxia Task Force with the actionable science to support two management plans.