'Dead zone' in Gulf of Mexico among top 3 ever mapped (AP/CNN)

[eppur_se_muova]

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- The oxygen-poor "dead zone" off the Louisiana and Texas coasts isn't quite as big as predicted this year, but it is still the third-largest ever mapped, a scientist said Saturday.

Crabs, eels and other creatures usually found on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico are swimming in crowds on the surface because there is too little oxygen in their usual habitat, said Nancy Rabalais, chief scientist for northern Gulf hypoxia studies.

"We very often see swarms of crabs, mostly blue crabs and their close relatives, swimming at the surface when the oxygen is low," she wrote in an e-mail from a research ship as it returned to Cocodrie from its annual measurement trip.

Eels, which live in sediments 60 to 70 feet below the water surface, are an even less common sight, she said.

The 7,900-square-mile area with almost no oxygen, a condition called hypoxia, is about the size of Connecticut and Delaware together. The Louisiana-Texas dead zone is the world's second-largest hypoxic area, she said.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/07/29/dead.zone.ap/index.html

(I realize a story about this was already posted, posting again to draw more attention.)