Harbingers of the Change

A couple of weeks ago it was reported here that "dead zones" similar to the excessive eutrophication area in the Gulf of Mexico were starting to appear off of the Northwest Coast of the United States.

Eutrophication is normally observed in isolated bodies of freshwater that get too polluted with fertilizers and sewage to sustain normal life.

In the oceans, this started off the coast of Lousiana during the summers of the late 20th century. As the Mississippi washes nutrients into the Gulf, it creates planktonic blooms that deplete large areas offshore of oxygen and the lving things that require oxygen to survive. What takes over? Anaerobes and facultative anaerobes, bacteria that can survive quite nicely without oxygen.

Today in The New York Pravda we're treated with skepticism that this really matters.

… There is little dispute that the dead zone exists; the disagreement centers on whether it matters much. In a state where fishermen are already accustomed to strict regulation, fights with environmentalists and attention from academics, many of them are having none of the notion that there is a larger problem.

“They say it’s global warming and it’s Bush’s fault, and it just goes on and on and on,” said Bill Wechter, 53, a crabber who said he had been working here since 1978, had 500 traps stretching north from Newport and had suffered no losses. “Everybody’s guessing.”

This is the fifth straight year in which a dead zone has appeared here, but scientists say that this one is by far the biggest, covering as much as 1,200 square miles, and that the oxygen levels have been startlingly low in places.

Those low levels are caused by persistent northerly winds that push nutrient-rich water into shallow areas — a process known as upwelling — without being offset by southerly winds that typically flush out the water and effectively keep it from becoming overfertilized. Dead zones are common around the world, with the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Erie, Narragansett Bay and Long Island Sound experiencing them on occasion. But most often they are caused by local pollution problems, including runoff containing fertilizer or sewage.

Adding the recent observations off Newport to findings that date from 2002, when a summertime dead zone was first documented here, some scientists say changes in wind patterns could indicate a growing disparity between rising land temperatures and cool ocean temperatures. Such a condition has long been predicted in some regional models on the effects of global warming, said John A. Barth, an Oregon State oceanographer who is among a group of scientists of various disciplines studying the Oregon coast.

But the fishermen say they know the ocean best: they spend their lives working it rather than writing research papers about it. Changes in ocean conditions simply require adjustment, they say, whether that means shortening lines or fishing closer in or farther out…

The multimillion dollar crabbing industry much prefers driving with its eyes closed, and propaganda fluff pieces like this keep the pesky civilians, scientists, and regulators away quite nicely.

While the oceans become a cesspool.