Historical Context

The R/V Acadiana is a research vessel owned and operated by LUMCON, often used in gathering data about
hypoxiahttp://www.gulfhypoxia.net/Resources/Media/dayontheacadiana.asp

Though hypoxia within the Gulf of Mexico was first documented in 1972, in 1975 and 1976, two cruises scanned the Louisiana coast for hypoxic regions in attempt to gather more information regarding the "dead zone" (Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia 2014). These expeditions uncovered the Gulf of Mexico dead zone (Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia 2014). Since then, the size and severity of hypoxic regions within the Gulf of Mexico have been recorded by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON). The image above shows one of the resources the group LUMCON used to collect data about hypoxia in the 1970s. The Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force was founded in 1997 (Mississippi River 2014). This group was established in order to understand the causes and effects of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico region (Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force 2014). The task force has attempted to reduce the size, severity, and duration of hypoxia in the region by managing the nutrients and fertilizers which are being dumped into the Gulf. In 2001, they released the 2001 Action Plan, a national strategy to reduce Gulf hypoxia by reducing nutrient run-off in addition to preserving coastal wetlands, which provide natural filtration to the chemical-rich water (Mississippi River 2014). The Task Force's goal (as illustrated by the graph below) is to reduce the dead zone to an area of 2,000 square miles by 2015. Though the dead zone is larger than it was last year, it is still considerably lower than past years (most notably 2002, 2001, and 2008). While this is significant progress, the Task Force has a lot of work ahead in order to meet the action plan goal.

The average size of the dead zone itself has been steadily increasing over the past 20 years.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/images/2013hypoxiagraph2.png

Works Cited:

Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia. (2014) Overview. (Date accessed: February 20, 2014.) 
http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/overview/

Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force. (2014) Task Force History and Reassessment. (Date accessed: February 20, 2014.) 
http://water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/named/msbasin/history.cfm