We will never know if this year's Gulf dead zone was the largest ever. The cruise sampling the Gulf was terminated in, apparently, the middle of a large dead zone, before it was fully sampled. PDF
"This is the largest such area off the upper Texas coast that we have found since we began this work in 1985." She commented that "The total area probably would have been the largest if we had had enough time to completely map the western part."
Oxygen concentration in bottom-water across the Louisiana-Texas shelf from July 25-31, 2010. The black line outlines values less than 2 mg/L, or hypoxia. Letters indicate transects. Black dots are sampled stations.
continued at Daily Kos...
