With an attempt expected this week to permanently plug the BP drilling rig oil leak, scientists report that the zone of low-oxygen water that forms off the Louisiana coast every summer is one of the largest ever measured.
More than 7,700 square miles - an area roughly the size of Massachusetts - has too little oxygen to on the bottom to support fishing or shrimping, according to a release today by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University.
A larger than usual hypoxic zone had been predicted this year from nutrient pollution washing into the Gulf from the Mississippi River watershed. But researchers were unsure what if any impact the massive oil leak might have.
Instead of the usual continuous band of low-oxygen water along the coast, scientists found a patchwork this summer. They attributed the pattern to tropical storms stirring the water and mixing in oxygen.
Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the marine consortium and chief scientist aboard the research vessel Pelican that sampled the northern Gulf waters, said low-oxygen waters were mapped all the way west to Galveston, Texas. She said the total hypoxic zone might actually have been the largest ever, had scientists had time to fully map it.
(Hypoxic zone map by LUMCON)