http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110614/ap_on_sc/us_sci_gulf_dead_zone-snip-
Federal and university scientists predict this year's zone will be between 8,500 square miles and about 9,400 square miles. The actual size of the dead zone will be measured over the summer.
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The biggest contributor is the amount of fertilizer — and the nitrates and phosphates in them — that wind up in the Mississippi River each spring and get flushed out to the Gulf.
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"As usual, the size of the low oxygen offshore is driven by both the freshwater and nitrogen levels in the Mississippi, so this year we have had floods and we have had more nitrate coming into the system," said Nancy Rabalais, the executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Rabalais is a lead researcher into the dead zone.
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and if the flooded nuke plant goes bad that hot radiation will flow down and into the Gulf of Death spreading death further and further.
sigh