Just when we were getting used to global warming

al-Reuters has the latest global crisis:

Dead zones in coastal waters -- regions of ocean floor so deprived of oxygen that most marine life cannot survive -- are spreading worldwide at an alarming pace, scientists said on Thursday... This decade alone, the number of coastal dead zones has risen by about a third to 405 worldwide, with clusters on the coasts of the United States and Europe. Combined, they take up an area of at least 95,000 square miles. The biggest one measures about 30,000 square miles in the Baltic Sea, the researchers said. This is followed in size by one in the Gulf of Mexico starting at the mouth of the Mississippi River in the United States, and one at the mouth of China's Yangtze River in the East China Sea... The number of dead zones started to approximately double every 10 years starting in the 1960s, the researchers said. There were 301 such dead zones at the end of the 1990s, 132 at the end of the 1980s, 63 at the end of the 1970s and 39 at the end of the 1960s... Dead zones are formed when excess nutrients, mostly nitrogen and phosphorus, enter coastal waters and help fertilize blooms of algae. When these tiny plants die and sink to the sea bottom, they provide a food source for bacteria, which consume dissolved oxygen from surrounding waters.