Saturday, September 4, 2010

Report: Hypoxia in U. S. Coastal Waters

A report issued  by key environmental and scientific federal agencies assesses the increasing prevalence of low-oxygen “dead zones” in U.S. coastal waters and outlines a series of research and policy steps that could help reverse the decades-long trend.

The interagency report notes that incidents of hypoxia (a condition in which oxygen levels drop so low that fish and other animals are stressed or killed) have increased nearly 30-fold since 1960. Incidents of hypoxia were documented in nearly 50 percent of the 647 waterways assessed for the new report, including the Gulf of Mexico, home to one of the largest such zones in the world.

The report is the final of five reports mandated by Congress in the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Amendments Act of 2004 and is available online at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/nstc/oceans

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