October 1st, 2010

The Environmental Protection Agency is threatening to hit five mid-Atlantic states with new rules that could raise sewer bills and limit construction in a large-scale crackdown on pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.

The move represents the most aggressive action in the 27-year history of the Chesapeake cleanup. When states previously failed to meet deadlines in 2000 and 2010, the agency did nothing. The new deadline is 2025, but the EPA served notice that it will not tolerates states lagging behind in improvements.

Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware and New York are in the EPA crosshairs. Those states combine to account for more than 70 percent of the pollution that causes “dead zones” in the bay. The agency informed those states that their cleanup plans “serious deficiencies” and threatened to force them to make up the difference with costly new measures.

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August 24th, 2010

One more reason to be skeptical about assertions that the BP oil spill has been largely cleaned up: An increase in the number of creatures swarming to escape oxygen-depleted sea waters.
The phenomenon – called “jubilees” by Gulf Coast residents who traditionally take the opportunity to scoop up free seafood in buckets – usually appears during summer and causes swarms along the shoreline. This year, scientists say, jubilees are occurring in open water for the first time, due to an increase in low-oxygen areas possibly resulting from the more than four million barrels of oil the BP spill dumped into the Gulf.

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June 19th, 2009

FROM GREEN RIGHT NOW REPORTS:

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to grow this year to between 7,400 and 8,400 square miles, a size roughly equivalent to the state of New Jersey, according to researchers at the University of Michigan.

That means the zone will be among the top three largest on record; the largest oxygen-starved zone reached 8,484 square miles in 2002.

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August 22nd, 2008

By Barbara Kessler

In yet another indictment of industrial farming methods and another threat to fish, researchers are reporting vast growth of ocean “dead zones.” Once rare, dead zones are multiplying and now total more than 400 around the world’s coastal waters, putting stresses on marine life by upsetting the underwater food chain, according to an August article in the journal Science.

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May 7th, 2008

By John DeFore

While polar bear populations face the challenge of habitat melting beneath their feet, organisms that call water home appear to be grappling with a stranger difficulty: More and more areas of the ocean have oxygen levels too low to sustain them.A report just published in the journal Science asserts that, as tropical oceans warm, regions of low oxygen content are expanding.

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