Dead Zones Grow
Do you like the taste of shrimp, crab, or grouper that you can only get along America’s southern coastline? You might what to savor whatever you can of these seafood delights because Dead Zones are growing around the world.
I remember reading about Dead Zones at least 10 years ago. It has now become a chronic problem especially in the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay. The culprit is groundwater runoff from farms that carry fertilizer high in Nitrogen and Phosphorus over hill and dale until it ends up in the ocean waters.
Farm fertilizers do their trick in the open waters along our coastlines raising record crops of algae, which in turn rob the water of oxygen, which pretty much kills off all life to the bottom. In 2004 it was documented that there were over 150 dead zones worldwide. Many are recurring dead zones like in the Pacific Northwest.
The fact that the U.S. is pushing corn for ethanol is going to make the dead zones grow larger and faster. The New Farm Bill may help alleviate some of the problem because for the first time it allotted millions to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and billions for good land stewardship and protection for wetlands. Still the new Farm Bill cut back on the Conservation Reserve Program. This program paid farmers for not farming areas of their land that acted as buffers against fertilizer runoff. Using that land to grow cash crops is enticing.
So the farmer profits from planting more land, while the farmer of the sea will have a decline in profits. Land farming vs. sea farming has an inverse relationship. There has to be a happy medium in the future if we want to continue to enjoy shrimp, crab, and grouper because this is not the way to go. Like the article in U.S. and World Reports says there will be: “more fertilizer in the ground and fewer barriers to stop it.”
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/06/06/dead-zones-grow-in-the-gulf-of-mexico.html