Dead Zones: Why Our Oceans are Dying
Throughout this week I have been watching TED Talks about broadly the oceans and many topics and issues came to my attention and need to be addressed. The main idea that I found from most of the talks was things that humans are doing that need to stop or be reduced because our oceans are looking bad right now, let alone the marine life. What are Dead Zones? One thing that really made me interested was things called dead zones. Dead zones are when the oceans are not getting enough oxygen for species to survive. This happens when mainly farms, for example, soybean farms use a fertilizer that contains nitrogen and phosphorus. Those harmful gases runoff into lakes and rivers which ultimately end up in the ocean. When the wastewater gets to the ocean there is a build-up of algae, the algae sinks and then that decomposes the water down at the ocean floor. Nancy Rabalais, a marine scientist talks about this topic. “The problem is that there's just too m...