“Pacific Ocean ‘dead zone’ in Northwest may be irreversible.” was the title of a very alarming article recently in the L.A. Times by Kim Murphy. Her information was based on studies in Corvallis, as reported by Jack Barth, an oceanography professor at Oregon State University.

Researchers at OSU determined that an oxygen-depleted “dead zone” the size of New Jersey is starving sea life off the coast of Oregon and Washington and will probably appear there each summer as a result of climate change.

The huge area is one of 400 dead zones around the world, most of them caused by fertilizer and sewage dumped into the oceans in river runoff.

The number of dead zones in Earth’s oceans is increasing rapidly, doubling every decade. The most alarming thing about this particular study is that this dead zone off our coast, unlike others, seems impossible to fix. That is because evolving wind conditions are responsible, caused by our changing climate – rather than pollution.

Low-oxygen zones are created when large blooms of plankton form on the surface of the ocean, then decay and fall to the sea floor, where further decay eats up the oxygen in the water. The low oxygen level is very hard on organisms of all kinds, and they have to flee the area, if they can, or they just die off if they can’t.

These are the dead zones.

The affected waters of the continental shelf in Oregon and Washington for the most part are not inundated with polluted river runoff, which might cause changes. The nutrients that feed the plankton blooms here come from natural sources. These researchers believe a change in the flushing movement of water along the coastline may be responsible.

The gradual warming of surface waters across the north Pacific has tended to isolate deep waters far below the surface – allowing less oxygen penetration. There also has been a change in wind patterns, encouraging the upwelling of that low-oxygen water and inhibiting the natural flushing action of water.

Although it is possible that the phenomenon could be related to cyclical ocean currents and temperatures, Professor Barth said that he was more inclined to believe it was a long-term result of climate change. He said that researchers had scanned records going back to the 1950s and had seen nothing similar to what has appeared every year off the Oregon coast since 2002.

What can we do, then? Is it hopeless? Of course not. We see in this information all the more reason to work on clean water, clean air, and generally caring about Earth in every way we can. The most successful way we find to do that is to keep talking with our neighbors about our sustainability – of our communities, our planet, our lives.

If you would like to join with others who are exploring sustainability issues, please join the new Choices for Sustainability Discussion Class at Stillwaters starting this Fall. For more information, contact Joleen Palmer at (360) 297-2876 or Joleen@stillwatersenvironmentalcenter.org.