The massive floods that wracked the Midwest throughout the spring have meant record runoff from the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico. That runoff has carried not just a surge of silt-laden fresh water pushing out into the sea, but also a mixture of fertilizers, pesticides, and both agricultural and industrial wastes. The result is already the second largest “dead zone” on record, one that has already expanded into areas normally worked by shrimpers and fishermen. And the dead zone is still growing.
Meanwhile, as the Associated Press reports, 279 dolphins have been found on Gulf beaches this spring, three times the normal annual number, and 98% of those stranded animals have died. Suspicion for the animal’s death has focused not just on the extreme influx of fresh waster, but of lingering effects from oil spills in the Gulf, including the massive BP spill that was “contained” in 2010, but which continues to have devastating impacts across the region. As of this week, 121 dolphins had been stranded along beaches in Mississippi, 89 in Louisiana, 32 in Alabama and another 37 along the Gulf coast of Florida.
CNN reports that in 2018 Mississippi waters were already carrying three times the amount of nitrogen and twice the phosphorous recorded in the 1950s because of increased human activities. Now nitrogen numbers are up another 18% and phosphorus up by 49% as the huge spring rains flush the wastes of the nation into the Gulf. The result is a region where fish, shrimp, and other sea life cannot live, and where the less mobile organisms simply die in place, making conditions worse. At the moment, the dead zone is smaller than the record 8,776 square mile dead zone that happened just two years ago … but this year’s zone is already predicted to exceed 8,700 square miles and may pass that record.
The same climate-driven floods that wrecked farms, homes, businesses, and military bases across the upper Midwest, have continued downstream bringing extreme flooding in Missouri and Arkansas. The floods going into the Gulf have been further aggravated by more extreme weather that brought flooding to Oklahoma and parts of Texas. The result is a chemical cocktail of death, spreading out through an huge area and revealing again that the effects of the climate crisis cannot be contained.
Farmers in the Midwest, who saw their grain prices drop to nothing due to Donald Trump’s tariffs, suffered an even bigger blow this spring when grain that they had stored in hopes that prices might improve, was instead flooded where it stood in silos across a dozen states. The climate crisis had already been contributing to record levels of farm bankruptcies, and the one-two punch of tariffs and flooding as proved to be too much for hundreds more farms.
Now that misery is spreading to Gulf where, as Science Alert reports, commercial fishermen are hoping that a disaster declaration might help them hang on. However, with the record dead zone of 2017 being replicated again so quickly, it seems impossible that fishing can be sustained in the region. “It's perennial," said LSU marine ecologist Nancy Rabalais who works on forecasting the extent of dead zones. "And it shows no signs of diminishing."
Lack of fish for the fishermen also means a lack of food for dolphins, turtles, and other wildlife. Researchers have found that the bays were dolphins usually find fish and crabs are simply empty. Dolphins don’t breath in the water like fish, so in theory they could withstand the onslaught that is changing the basic chemistry around them. Until they starve to death.
