Pacific Coast Dead Zones Linked to Global Warming (Aug 3rd, 2006)

In the latest bad news related to human-induced climate change, scientists last week reported bottom fish and crabs washing up dead on Oregon beaches are the latest victims of global warming, which is reportedly causing oxygen-deprived "dead zones" along a 70-mile stretch of Oregon's Pacific coast. Marine ecologists attribute these dead zones to increasingly explosive blooms of tiny plants called phytoplankton that die and sink to the ocean floor, where they are then eaten by bacteria that consume the oxygen in the water column. The recurring phytoplankton blooms, which scientists first noticed off the coast of Oregon in 2002, are caused by increasingly strong north winds--a symptom of climate change--that result in massive cyclical upwellings of sea water.