What are the effects of drilling in the gulf of Mexico?

Answer 1

Offshore oil drilling especially deep water drilling as evidenced by the BP oil catastrophe.

Loss of Brown Pelicans now an endangered species.

Danjanks gave the following answer in the discussion area, moved to here:

One of the major environmental problems in the Gulf of Mexico is the "dead zone." It is an area the size of New Jersey where fish and many other aquatic species cannot survive. They will die because there is no oxygen in the water. It is caused by over fertilization.

The excess fertilizer that gets washed away from farm fields travels to the Mississippi river. It acts as a pump, dumping massive amounts of excess fertilizer into the Gulf of Mexico.

The high level of nitrogen found in fertilizer causes large amounts of plankton to grow. The sudden burst of plankton growth, also called plankton plumes, blocks any light from reaching plant growth on the ocean floor and kills it.

When the plankton die they fall to the bottom where they are eaten by decomposers. The decomposers take in oxygen and release CO2 into the water. I believe you call that respiration. The decomposers that eat all the plankton suck up so much oxygen that nothing can survive. They call areas where this has happened a dead zone.

One is located in the Gulf of Mexico and it's the size of New Jersey.

Answer 2

heavy floods and tornadoes!