Ocean Sentry
(From ap.google.com) Washington – Like a chronic disease spreading through the body, “dead zones” with too little oxygen for life are expanding in the world”s oceans. “We have to realize that hypoxia is not a local problem,” said Robert J. Diaz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
“It is a global problem and it has severe consequences for ecosystems.”
Diaz and co-author Rutger Rosenberg report in Friday’s edition of the journal Science that there are now more than 400 dead zones around the world, double what the United Nations reported just two years ago.
Pollution-fed algae, which deprive other living marine life of oxygen, is the cause of most of the world’s dead zones. Scientists mainly blame fertilizer and other farm run-off, sewage and fossil-fuel burning.
(By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID)
