Dead water zone thousands of kilometers wide discovered in Arabian Sea
Scientists fear the situation will get worse as there is almost no oxygen in the dead waters of the Gulf of Oman.
The newly discovered body of water is nearly the size of the Mekong Delta, located below the Arabian Sea.
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| A robotic probe is exploring the dead water in the Gulf of Oman in the UAE. |
Scientists fear the situation could get worse as the dead water in the Gulf of Oman contains virtually no oxygen. The area, which is virtually devoid of life, is considered the largest and thickest dead water zone in the world and is a terrible threat waiting to happen.
Dr Bastien Queste from the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia said: "Although the sea is all water, fish and marine life still need a certain amount of oxygen to live, of course they cannot survive here. This is a real environmental disaster, with many consequences for people who depend on the sea for food and jobs."
This dead zone also affects the recycling of nitrogen gas, generating nitrous oxide - a greenhouse gas 300 times more toxic than CO2.
The team deployed two Seaglider robots in the Gulf for eight months to build a comprehensive picture of oxygen levels in the seawater, an area previously inaccessible to researchers due to privacy and political concerns.
The satellite-communicating robot, about the size of a human, can dive to depths of up to 1,000m and cover an area of thousands of kilometers.
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| A Seaglider robot deployed in the Arabian Sea (UEA). |
Boyan Slat explains:“This is a disaster waiting to happen, as climate change worsens, warm oxygen-depleted waters could spread with pollutants released from rivers and create mass destruction of the seas.”
But no one can know how serious the situation has become because scientists are restricted from collecting data in the countries that control these waters.
"We have hardly had any data collected for almost half a century because we have not been able to send ships here. Our research shows that the situation has become very bad indeed," said Boyan Slat.
Dead zones, also known as “oxygen minimum zones”, are commonly found in some parts of the world at depths of between 200m and 800m. But the team found fish in the Gulf of Oman could only survive in a thin layer of water close to the surface.
Computer simulations show the problem could get worse in the coming century as the waters expand and oxygen levels decline even more severely.
