Gulf Dead Zone
© WWLTV Eyewitness News

New Orleans-- For years now, scientists have been monitoring the development of a massive dead zone off the coast of south Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, new research is showing the presence of another underwater area lacking oxygen and life -- this time in the Chandeleur Sound, east of St. Bernard Parish.

Gulf waters include some of the richest areas for seafood in the country, and part of that critical habitat includes the Chandeleur Sound.

"This general area is a major path for migration of fish," said Dr. John Lopez of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation.

Deep below the surface, life may be struggling. The Foundation, along with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCOM), recently decided to share their findings with each other concerning the dead zone in the Chandeleur Sound.

What they discovered was that the dead zone is four times larger than they initially thought. It covers more than a 1,000 square miles, stretching from the Chandeleur Islands, east to the Florida Panhandle and possibly beyond.

"It's relatively new that it's been discovered," Lopez said. "Basically, in 2008, we saw the first indications of it. We think it may have been developing for a number of years. It had just been overlooked."

That's no longer the case, though. Helping to track the dead zone is the non-profit Marine Research and Assistance Council.

"We have different stratifications where we drop the instrument to different water levels, and we measure temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen," said Chuck Cropp, president of the Marine Research and Assistance Council.

Cropp said it didn't take long before their instruments picked up on the dead zone, also known as hypoxia.

"The hypoxia level was crazy," he said. "So, we went from having water with oxygen in it, to having water with no oxygen in it."

A lack of oxygen can kill marine life within hours. Shellfish that can't easily swim away are most at risk.

What effect the dead zone could have on the fisheries, and what may be causing it in the first place, is still not clear. However, scientists suspect it may have something to do with its location and the sea current there.

"Essentially, you have the boot of Louisiana that comes further south out into the Gulf of Mexico and creates a corner with the Mississippi coastline," Lopez said. "We think this may just be an area of low energy."

Researchers don't think the dead zone has anything to do with the oil spill, since they first spotted it two years beforehand. They plan to head out again in a couple weeks to gather more samples from the dead zone.

They also plan to reach out to their counterparts in Alabama and Florida because they suspect the dead zone may stretch even further east than they have been able to document so far.