Devastation off the Beautiful Oregon Coast

EcoPol Project

A Dead Zone is ocean water that has been deprived of nutrients and adequate oxygen. It becomes a living entity and destroys anything in its path at an alarming rate. When water offers no oxygen, fish, shell fish and all other crustaceans die as they get trapped within and become unable to swim or crawl away. Dead zones live in our oceans. And they are deadly! They live from the surface of our oceans and they stretch to the ocean floor, all the while sucking the life out of anything that gets in their way. They can be small in size or mushroom to hundreds of square miles.Below you see sea gulls feeding on the dead crab and starfish. And a picture of the Oregon Coast where the dead zone is located. You can see the dark green water which is actually algae.

A phenomenon exists where a natural dead zone lies waiting to ambush any living organism that dare enter into it’s trap. It is located off the gorgeous coastline of beautiful Oregon. The video I am going to ask you to watch in a moment, is astonishing, to say the least; it is the real affects of hypoxia at its best. The scientists filmed the area in 2002, when they discovered the dead zone, then again in 2006, when they witnessed for the first time the devastation within that dead zone. This short film is unpleasant to watch. But, I believe it will give you a good idea as to what is really going on in the dead zones around the globe. So please, click on the following url and watch the short video, you will be enlightened. 

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/deadzones/climatechange.jsp

 Yes, this is very disheartening. But, it is very real and they continue to double and grow each year. The first time I watched this short film it sickened me. It looks like a shell fish and fish war zone. It is sad to see what is happening to our ocean floors, whether it be natural or unnatural. This particular dead zone, in 2006, was spanned outwardly of 1,200 square miles, I suspect it has grown since. Oregon scientists think this particular dead zone is happening because of climate change and coastal winds. But, hundreds in our world are caused because of human inattentiveness, while pollution and waste continue to be dumped in our rivers and streams, our oceans continue to be destroyed.

What can you do? Join a group such as this one:  http://ecolocalizer.com/2012/03/23/gulf-coast-deadzones-environmentalists-sue-the-toothless-epa/  These environmentalists are suing the EPA because they are not enforcing laws on fertilizer usage. The more people that join the better chance we have of getting the dead zones under control,so the healing process can begin.

-Kelly Peters
Sources:
Dead Zones SOS: Is Climate Change Suffocating Our Seas?, The National Science Foundation, accessed May 14, 2012.