Thousands Of Fish On The US Texas Gulf Coast

US Texas coast

The Gulf Coast of the United States, sometimes referred to as the South Coast, or the Third Coast, includes the coasts of the US states that are on the Gulf of Mexico, which include Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, known as the Gulf States. All Gulf states are located in the southern region of the United States.

The economy of the Gulf Coast region is dominated by industries related to fishing, aerospace, agriculture, and tourism. The region is dominated by cities from west to east of Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Houston, Galveston, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, Pensacola, Tampa, and, increasingly, Sarasota. All urban agglomeration centers contain large ports

Thousands of dead fish floated to the surface of the water, which were washed up on the sands in the Gulf Coast of Texas, USA, according to Sky News.

According to the New York Times, piles of dead fish were spotted covering the edge of the beach, during what wildlife officials described as a "low dissolved oxygen event."

It was a "perfect storm" of bad conditions, said Brian Frazier, director of the Bazuria County Parks Department.

The official explained that warm water contains much less oxygen than cold water, and that calm seas and cloudy skies in the region have hindered ways to pump oxygen normally into ocean water. Waves add oxygen to water, and cloudy skies reduce the ability of microorganisms to produce oxygen through photosynthesis, he said.

For her part, Katie St. Clair, director of marine life at the University of Texas, said that the warming of the Gulf Coast waters through climate change could have contributed to the fish deaths.

"As water temperatures rise, this could certainly lead to more of these events occurring, especially in our shallow, inshore or onshore environments," she added.

The National Meteorological Service recorded a high of 92 degrees Celsius in Brazoria province on Friday, the day it was first reported that dead fish washed ashore.

And the director of the Arizona Parks Department pointed out that the death of these fish is "not rare" in the region and begins to occur when the water temperature rises during the summer.

"It's a little worrying to see a wave of dead fish wash ashore," Frazier said. But he added that local water conditions will improve because ocean waves add oxygen back into the water and fish will swim away from areas with low oxygen.

A United Nations report in 2019 concluded that warming ocean waters has led to increased cases of "hypoxia" - or low oxygen levels - in coastal waters, threatening fish populations.

  One of the report's authors said at the time that oxygen loss and other effects of global warming would "create enormous pressure" on the Gulf Coast region in the future.

In addition to localized hypoxia, a large "dead zone" of water stretching thousands of square miles is known to form in the Gulf of Mexico during the summer months.

The Gulf Coast consists of many inlet bays and lagoons. The coast is also criss-crossed by many rivers, the largest of which is the Mississippi River. Much of the land along the Gulf Coast is marsh, or was once marsh. The Gulf Coast is surrounded by the coastal plain of the Gulf that extends from southwest Texas to the Straits of Florida, while the western portions of the Gulf Coast consist of many barrier islands and peninsulas, including the 130-mile (210 km) Padre Island and Galveston Island in the US state of Texas. This terrain protects many bays and inlets and provides a barrier to incoming waves. The central part of the Gulf Coast, from eastern Texas to Louisiana, consists mainly of marshes. The eastern part of the Gulf Coast, mostly Florida, is dotted with numerous bays and bougainvillea inlets.

The economic activity

The Gulf Coast is a major center of economic activity. The swamps along the Louisiana and Texas coasts provide fertile ground and nurseries for the ocean life that drives the fishing and shrimping industry. The Port of South Louisiana (Metropolitan New Orleans in Laplace) and the Port of Houston are among the ten busiest ports in the world in terms of cargo volume. As of 2004, seven of the ten busiest ports in the United States are on the Gulf Coast.

The discovery of oil and gas deposits along the coast and at sea, along with easy access to sea transportation, has made the Gulf Coast the heart of the petrochemical industry in the United States. The coast contains approximately 4,000 oil rigs.