A threatening creature creeps stealthily about the globe, sucking the life out of every place it reaches. It would make a classic plot for a horror B-movie, yet the real-life parallel gets few gasps. The protagonist is hypoxia, a low-oxygen condition that is becoming increasingly common – albeit out of sight for most of us – on the floor of coastal waters and estuaries. The results are horrifying. Hypoxia kills or drives out all but the most primitive life forms, and the resulting dead zones now number about 200 – and they are just the ones we know about (see The dead zones”…
Earth
Editorial: Taking the oceans' breath away
6 December 2006
