Friday, February 15, 2008

"Dead Zones" off Pacific Tied to Global Warming


Go to Los Angeles Times original

Low-oxygen areas that show scant signs of sea life have expanded. 'We seem to have crossed a tipping point,' a scientist says. Video images scanned from the seafloor revealed a boneyard of crab skeletons, dead fish and other marine life smothered under a white mat of bacteria. At times, the camera's unblinking eye revealed nothing at all -- a barren undersea desert in waters renowned for their bounty of Dungeness crabs and fat rockfish.

"We couldn't believe our eyes," Lubchenco said, recalling her initial impression of the carnage brought about by oxygen-starved waters. "It was so overwhelming and depressing. It appeared that everything that couldn't swim or scuttle away had died."

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