the extent of the dead zone. Unfortunately, it means we are going to have to work even harder than we expected.” Turner cites Rabalais’s careful and persistent measurements as a key to their success. “It’s a remarkable accomplishment to do this year after year,” he notes. But Rabalais insists, “Gene’s the genius. He thinks systemwide.” Through years of up-anddown funding, “I’ve just been persistent,” Rabalais says. “I’m not sure if luck has been on our side, but the importance of ecological research has been on our side.” —ERIKA ENGELHAUPT
(and in successively larger boats), the “Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia: Alternate now husband-and-wife team of States and a Legacy” by R. Eugene Turner and Rabalais has surveyed Turner and Dubravko Justic, Louisihypoxia in the Gulf, with only one ana State University; and Nancy N. exception in 1989 when funding ran Rabalais, Louisiana Universities Madry. rine Consortium, 2008, 42 (7), 2323-2327; DOI 10.1021/ es071617k. In 1974, biologist R. Eugene (Gene) Turner was tossing about in a tiny 15foot boat off the Louisiana shore when his handheld oxygen meter started showing strangely low readings. Turner was scouting the coastal waters as a new faculty member at Louisiana State University, and what he discovered led to a career-spanning quest to understand low-oxygen “dead zones”, or hypoxia, in the (Left to right) R. Eugene Turner, Dubravko Justic, and Nancy Gulf of Mexico. His longtime Rabalais. collaboration with coauthors This year’s award-winning paper is Nancy N. Rabalais and Dubravko a culmination of research that led Justic (affectionately dubbed “Dubi” the team to conclude that coastal by his teammates) has now resulted ecosystems in the Gulf are becoming in ES&T’s top science paper of 2008. more sensitive to nutrient loads. “It’s “Other people had measured low not the same system as in the 1960s. oxygen before, but it had never been It’s taking less nutrients now to fuel followed up,” Turner says. He inithis hypoxic situation,” Rabalais says. tially wondered if the low-oxygen Over time, large nutrient-fueled areas were related to the large numalgal blooms have deposited loads of ber of oil and gas rigs nearby, but organic matter to coastal sediments, soon he realized that high levels of and the slow decay of these remnutrients flowing down the Missisnants in the sediments continues to sippi River to the Gulf of Mexico use oxygen. This extra demand for were to blame. Most of the nutrients oxygen adds to the problem created come from fertilizers used in the by each year’s new blooms, and as a Midwest, and these nutrients stimuresult, the potential size of the hyplate excessive growth of algae that oxic zone doubled for a given nitrolater rob waters of oxygen when they gen load from 1980 to 2000. die and decompose. Michelle Scherer of the University In 1985, Turner and Rabalais reof Iowa, a new ES&T associate editor, ceived a small grant to map hypoxic was impressed by the paper. “I was zones. Rabalais then had her own struck by what an excellent example turn bobbing about 25 miles offshore of creative yet rigorous exploratory in an undersized Boston Whaler with data analysis it was,” she says. “This a handheld oxygen meter. “I came ecosystem change or ‘alternate state’, back and told him I wasn’t going to as the authors define it, has serious die doing this research,” she says. implications for our efforts to reduce For more than 20 years since then 10.1021/es900418d
2009 American Chemical Society
Published on Web 03/04/2009
COURTESY OF R. EUGENE TURNER
Top Paper in Environmental Science: Leaving a legacy of dead zones
April 1, 2009 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 9 2193
