Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

This video addresses the Gulf Dead Zone, a hypoxic zone, which is an area of low oxygen that can harm marine life near the bottom of the sea. The video describes how human activity in and around the Mississippi watershed contributes to making the dead zone and what actions are being taken to mitigate the effects.

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Notes from our reviewers

The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials.

This is a good video to use after addressing other related climate change concepts. Alone, this video can produce some anxiety. It provides a good way to connect human impacts on climate change to chemistry and physics lessons and could offer a good navigation tool for extending concepts.
This video is a good summary of anthropogenic processes that impact the health of oceans from source to sea. It does not provide specific evidence for claims. Some criticisms could arise from misconceptions that students bring into the lesson. This is particularly possible due to the claims that all people are part of the causes, which lends itself to skepticism in viewers predisposed to reject human causes of climate change. Passed initial science review - expert science review pending.
This video clearly sums up the concerns about and causes of anoxic zones. Dead zones may be a new concept for many students. The video may cause some initial anxiety about climate change, but after a few minutes, it trends positively and introduces ways in which humans are already mitigating the issue. This video is not a standalone activity or lesson but would be a great addition to an environmental science or chemistry class. It has many great visuals that help students understand the scale of some of the topics presented, like the size of a dead zone compared to the size of various states.