Oceanographers have found a huge “dead spot” at the bottom of the Gulf of Oman
MOSCOW, 27 Jun — RIA Novosti. The concentration of oxygen in the lower layers of the waters of the Gulf of Oman declined sharply in recent years, which has created huge “dead spot” at the bottom of it, where life is not, in principle, oceanographers say in an article published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“The Arabian sea has long been considered one of the largest “dead zones” in the oceans, but to date nobody could test it for the pirates and the ongoing conflicts in the region. We found that the situation is worse than feared — spot death has a huge size and continues to grow rapidly,” said bastien Keste (Bastien Queste) from the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UK).
Areas of the oceans with low oxygen content, so-called “zone of death”, are formed as a result of water pollution by fertilizers and industrial waste.
The ingress of nitrates and other compounds in rivers and then in the coastal areas leads to rapid multiplication of unicellular algae in the ocean, the death and decomposition of which in the water column absorbs most of the oxygen. Most of the animals in such conditions does not survive.
In recent years, ecologists and oceanographers are finding more hints that global warming and some bacteria accelerate the growth of such “dead spots” in the waters of the oceans, particularly in tropical and Equatorial zones. Today, a similar fate befell about 7% of the total area of the oceans and seas of the Earth.