DEAD ZONE off Oregon Coast

bubba · Since 08 Aug 2006 1 Posts New Member

Keep your eyes peeled for Mr. Whitey feeding on all the chum...
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‘Dead Zone’ Reappears Off the Oregon Coast

By CORNELIA DEAN
The New York Times
Published: August 6, 2006

For the fifth year in a row, unusual wind patterns off the coast of Oregon have produced a large “dead zone,” an area so low in oxygen that fish and crabs suffocate.

The zone occupies a space roughly the size of Rhode Island.

This dead zone is unlike those in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, which result from fertilizer, sewage or runoff from hog or poultry operations carried by rivers. The Oregon zone appears when the wind generates strong currents carrying nutrient-rich but oxygen-poor water from the deep sea to the surface near shore, a process called upwelling.

The nutrients encourage the growth of plankton, which eventually dies and falls to the ocean floor. Bacteria there consume the plankton, using up oxygen.

Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist at Oregon State University, said the phenomenon did not appear to be linked to recurring El Niño or La Niña currents or to long-term cycles of ocean movements. That made Dr. Lubchenco wonder if climate change might be a factor, she said, adding, “There is no other cause, as far as we can determine.”

The dead zone, which appears in late spring and lasts a matter of weeks, has quadrupled in size since it first appeared in 2002 and this year covers about 1,235 square miles, an area about as large as Rhode Island, Dr. Lubchenco said.

The zone dissipates when winds shift.

It is not clear what effect the dead zone may have on future fish or crab catches, Dr. Lubchenco said. So far, she said, the dead zone has not formed until the Dungeness crab season has been nearly over.

Hal Weeks, a marine ecologist who leads the Marine Habitat Project for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the formation of the low-oxygen, or hypoxic, areas had so far caused “localized disruptions” in fishing but no overall decline in catches and no interference with recreational fishing.

Dr. Weeks said these areas might have occurred in the past and gone undetected. But he added that when he convened a meeting of scientists and fishermen about 18 months ago to discuss the issue, the fishermen said they did not recall problems occurring so regularly.

“Based on people’s memories,” Dr. Weeks said, “they did not have a pattern or periodicity to it.”

He and Dr. Lubchenco said scientists would take a research vessel out to sea on Tuesday and lower a robot vehicle to photograph the sea bottom to check fish and crab mortality.

“You don’t normally haul up a pot and find any dead crabs in it,” Dr. Lubchenco said. “And the crabbers that we have talked to have all reported dead crabs.”

Dr. Weeks said he hoped the research cruise would help explain what was going on. “I am expected to give the best possible technical advice to my managers,” he said, “and I am afraid right now I don’t have answers for them.”

In 2002 when the dead zone first appeared, Dr. Lubchenco said, she and other researchers dismissed it as an interesting anomaly. “But now, five years in a row, we are beginning to think there has been some sort of fundamental change in ocean conditions off the West Coast,” she said, possibly because of changes in the jet stream caused by global warming.

Scribble · Since 18 Nov 2005 636 Posts NoPo Addicted

Sounds kind of like a Jubilee. It is some wierd thing that only happens in Mobile Bay in Alabama and some other place in China that the oxygen lvls get low and all the fish swim to the beach. It's natural too.

Andy

tinyE · Since 21 Jan 2006 2004 Posts not really an XTreme Poster

any idea where the dead zone is?

Slidingby · Since 29 Mar 2006 125 Posts Portland, OR Stoked

Yeah, weird stuff, I had an experience with this thing 2 years ago, I was at the beach and there were thousands of jellys and fish down the beach as far as I could see, tried to figure it out but they didn't say anything about it for a few weeks after that in the oregonian. I have been going to the beach every other weekend for a large part of my life and have never seen anything like that, except for big storms washing things up. Was really strange to witness. Confused

kite_diva · Since 18 Dec 2005 5 Posts Kook

Here's the graphic showing location.

pacifichigh · Since 11 May 2005 1004 Posts ATX Texan

So is that why the water is brown on the central coast? We thought it was a red tide, but they probably are one and the same.

blowhard · Since 26 Dec 2005 2025 Posts Windward

don't worry it just means you don't have kill your dinner ITS ALREADY DEAD

Kataku2k3 · Since 14 Aug 2005 3753 Posts Los Angeles, CA Videographer

God damn upwellings making our coastal waters COLDER than need be too... FUCK!!! Evil or Very Mad

And because the crabs (and little fish) die, the bigger fish eating them starve, making the seals starve, making the SHARKS starve/hungry, which in turn makes them feed off of kiters/surfers! That's my reasoning... Surprised

I'm gonna go feed the seals at South Beach some Cheetos so the sharks can eat them now.

Randomness, sorry, bored as shit in CORVALLIS... I think it's time to head north.

trevorsmith · Since 25 Apr 2005 501 Posts PDX Addicted

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2006/Aug06/dieoff.html

...“We saw a crab graveyard and no fish the entire day,”

This week, it is covered in dead and rotting crabs, the fish are gone, and worms that ordinarily burrow into the soft sediments have died and are floating on the bottom.

The water just off the bottom is filled with a massive amount of what researchers call “marine snow” – fragments of dead pieces of marine life, mostly jellyfish and other invertebrates. As this dead material decays, it is colonized by bacteria that further suck any remaining oxygen out of the water.