I'll have the plankton soup with my soupy swill, please

According to a report by two U.S. scientists, "Spreading Dead Zones and Consequence for Marine Ecosystems," there are 405 asphyxiating dead zones in our oceans. At this rate, one scientist says, all that will be left for the next generation to harvest from the sea is "plankton soup."

Dead zones are caused by nutrient pollution, such as fertilizer runoff from agriculture, that adds phosphates and nitrogen to the water, causing massive algae blooms. The algae then die, and sink into the ocean, where bacteria consume it, sucking up the oxygen from the water and causing what is known as hypoxia, or a dead zone.

North America's largest dead zone is in the Gulf of Mexico: a 22,000-sq-km sea morgue the size of New Jersey.

Other dead zones have been discovered off California, in Lake Erie, around the Florida Keys, in North and South Carolina creeks and in Washington's Puget Sound. Together, they have turned 246,048 sq km of the seas - an area the equivalent of all five of the Great Lakes - into marine wastelands.

Because fish and other organisms can't live without oxygen, dead zones can be extremely detrimental to the fishing industry, as well as to aquatic ecosytems.

The good news is that with proper pollution prevention dead zones may be reversible. But, if we keep going the direction that we are going, all we have to look forward to is seas emptied of fish and filled with "soupy swill" - algae, bacteria and jellyfish and their ilk - the "rise of slime." This brave new ocean will resemble ancient oceans - a soup of primeval muck where "microbes and jellyfish . . . may constitute the only surviving commercial fishery"

Things that make you say duh, Volume 3

This just in from the United National Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO): The United States and other developed countries waste a lot of food and water every year.

You think?

The amount that the U.S. wastes is quite staggering, however. in the United States, up to 30 percent of food, worth almost $50 billion, is thrown away each year. Wasted food also means wasted water that didn't have to be used to grow the food.

"That's like leaving the tap running and pouring 40 trillion litres of water into the garbage can - enough water to meet the household needs of 500 million people," the report said.

Anyone else think its about time for a new food system?

Source: The Vancouver Sun

I'm pretty sure water isn't supposed to be flammable

This lady in Canada can light her water on fire. Holy crap! Not surprisingly, there is an oil and gas company operating in her neighborhood that is trying to claim that the gas in the water is natural. As much as I hate bottled water, lets hope for her sake that she's been drinking it.

Read all about it in Treehugger.