There is supposedly a 10,000 square mile Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico?

Question

Has anyone else signed up for the Free The Hemp website? And what is the deal with a Dead Zone where no fish or life exists in lthe Gulf.... ???? Anyone????

Answer 1

A dead zone in the ocean is a bit different from a dead zone in a great lake. We first studied the dead zone in Lake erie  and all of our literature on dead zones started our from that evaluation.

Some things are common. Dead zones are created and maintained by decomposition in the water of large tonnages of water plants in the water. The decomposition requires oxygen from the water, and leaves insufficient free oxygen to support animal life.

The plants on the surface are great! They absorb CO2 and give the air oxygen.

In the great lake, water keeps carrying away the nutrients that the plants need to grow, but in the oceans there is always a lot of nutrients, it stays in hte ocean water as the plants die, so there is no natural limit to the growth of plant matter in the oceans.

When we see carbonate ion in the oceans rising we know that less calcium ion is present, and with less calcium we will see phosphate increase.

There is never a shortage of potassium, and plants (blue-green algae) produce most of our nitrogen fertilizer. So in the oceans, attempting to identify where plant nutrients came from becomes a moot point. Once the ocean has that nutrient, it just stays there and grows tons and tons of plant.

Can we do anything about it? Yes, we can harvest that plant matter before it starts to decompose, use that  plant matter as a source of bio-fuel.

As atmospheric CO2 rises, we will see more and more plant material decomposing in the oceans. We need to take some out for the health of the oceans.

Answer 2

yea i heard about that too theres no sign of life in a big area in the gulf.. i just signed up too the site is www.freethehemp.org

Answer 3

That is just rumor ,with no facts....

Answer 4

Yes.. all of the stuff (farmland runoff, and from the flooding) that washes down the Mississippi river contributes to algae that uses up the oxygen content.  Without oxygen fish and even small plankton cannot live  ... so there is a "dead zone"

Answer 5

Yes I know all about this, I have been to the website, the site is great, and I have joined, I know that we can make a differance. The website is

    www.freethehemp.org

Thank you to the peolpe that made this website up.

Answer 6

donfletcher has accurately explained the mechanism that forms the dead zone in the gulf.

its apparently always formed there from the runoff of nutrients from the Mississippi river.

recently it started to grow larger & cover a greater area because of a great increase in the planting of corn for bio fuel on thousands of acres of land that was previously unfarmed & just growing natural grasses under the governments conservation reserve program.

this is another example of the agw alarmists destroying the environment through their insistance on promoting illadvised programs. (bio fuel in this case)

its not just a harmless political game as the agw extremists seem to believe.

Answer 7

yep.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environ... <== 4 years ago.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/d/d...

http://www.wkkf.org/default.aspx?tabid=9...