The "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico

There’s a huge “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, where the flow of farming chemicals caused serious damages. According to a new research, although this flow is completely halted, the zone will take decades to come back to healthy levels. Toxic substances were used near the Mississippi. They flow through water, soil and air to the sea, poisoning the so called “dead zone”. Oxygen levels in this zone are really low, now at their minimum. 

The Gulf will take at least thirty years to recover, new study says. Researchers, who published their work in “Science”, claim that this possibility is not only unrealistic, but also highly unsustainable. Among the authors of the study there’s Nandita Basu, associate professor of environmental sciences at Canada’s University of Waterloo. She says: «Money is being spent on the landscape in an ad hoc way. We need to focus better. If we make the right changes it will have an impact, it’s just that it’ll take a few decades. It’s like when you go on a diet – you can’t expect results right away». Even if measures were adopted, they need time to go through the system.

Nevertheless, the Gulf of Mexico is not the only zone whom modern agriculture and climate change have destroyed. Waters are made warmer by this phenomenon, reducing the oxygen levels they bring. There are at least 500 sites in which we can found this kind of characteristic, like hypoxia or oxygen deprivation. They were just 50 in 1950. It’s something like a death cycle: fertilizers spilled into water kill fish, shellfish and birds, making poorer and more hungry people who rely on this kind of food.

The goal, sought also by the US federal government, is to completely solve the Gulf problem by 2035. There’s another short goal, which calls for a 20% reduction of nitrogen by 2025. According to Kim Van Meter, a colleague of Basu’s and co-author of the study, the short term is not possible to reach without an immediate change on the course we’re on now. Once again, nature-based solutions are the answer. Indeed, nitrogen pollution can be halted with the planting of certain grasses and trees and with a better use of fertilizers. US government is giving help to farmers in order to tackle pollution, even if someone says that these projects only increase the production, without healing the environment.

Eventually, according to Denise Breitburg, a marine scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center who was not involved in the report, «This study shows we need a scientific strategy and can’t expect instant results, but we know what needs to be done to improve things».