A giant underwater “dead zone” in the Chesapeake Bay is growing at an alarming rate because of unusually high nutrient pollution levels this year, according to Virginia and Maryland officials. They said the expanding area of oxygen-starved water is on track to become the bay’s largest ever.
This year’s Chesapeake Bay dead zone covers a third of the bay, stretching from the Baltimore Harbor to the bay’s mid-channel region in the Potomac River, about 83 miles, when it was last measured in late June. It has since expanded beyond the Potomac into Virginia, officials said.
Especially heavy flows of tainted water from the Susquehanna River brought as much nutrient pollution into the bay by May as normally comes in an entire average year, a Maryland Department of Natural Resources researcher said. As a result, “in Maryland we saw the worst June” ever for nutrient pollution, said Bruce Michael, director of the DNR’s resource assessment service.
That’s bad news for biologists who monitor the bay and horrible news for oysters and fish. Dead zones suck out oxygen from deep waters and kill any marine life that can’t get out of the way.
Nutrient pollution from chemicals such as fertilizers provide a feast for bay algae, which bloom and die in a rapid cycle. They decompose into a black glop that sucks oxygen out of deeper waters. Oysters and other shellfish are doomed in dead zones. Fish and crabs can skitter to surface waters where there’s more oxygen, but some don’t make it, Michael said.
No one knows how many marine creatures perish in dead zones, “because we just don’t know what goes on down there,” Michael said.
The world has entered an era of “global water bankruptcy” that is harming billions of people,...
For years, the Environmental Protection Agency has assigned a dollar value to the lives saved and...
The aurora could be visible across Canada and much of the northern tier of US states...
The Trump administration sued two California cities on Monday, seeking to block local laws that restrict...
