WEBVTT

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Good evening, welcome to New Orleans.

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I don't know if you knew this,

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but you are sitting within 15 minutes
of one of the largest rivers in the world:

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the Mississippi river.

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Old Man River, Big Muddy.

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And it goes as far north
as the state of Minnesota,

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as far east as the state of New York,

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as far west as Montana.

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And 100 miles from here, river miles,

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it empties its fresh water and sediments
into the Gulf of Mexico.

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That's the end of Geography 101.

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(Laughter)

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Now we're going to go
to what is in that water.

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Besides the sediment, there are dissolved
molecules, nitrogen and phosphorus.

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And those, through a biological process,

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lead to the formation
of areas called dead zones.

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Now, dead zone is a quite ominous word

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if you're a fish or a crab.

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(Laughter)

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Even a little worm in the sediments.

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Which means that there's not enough oxygen

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for those animals to survive.

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So, how does this happen?

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The nitrogen and the phosphorus

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stimulate the growth of microscopic plants
called phytoplankton.

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And small animals called zooplankton
eat the phytoplankton,

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small fish eat the zooplankton,
large fish eat the small fish

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and it goes on up into the food web.

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The problem is that there's just too much
nitrogen and phosphorus right now,

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too much phytoplankton
falling to the bottom

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and decomposed by bacteria
that use up the oxygen.

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That's the biology.

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Now, you can't see it
from the surface of the water,

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you can't see it in satellite images,

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so how do we know it's there?

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Well, a trawler can tell you,

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when she puts her net over the side
and drags for 20 minutes

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and comes up empty,

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that she knows she's in the dead zone.

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And she has to go somewhere else.

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But where else do you go
if this area is 8,000 square miles big?

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About the size of the state of New Jersey.

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Well, you either make
a decision to go further,

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without much economic return,

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or go back to the dock.

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As a scientist, I have access
to high-tech equipment

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that we can put over the side
of the research vessel

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and it measures oxygen
and many more things.

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We start at the Mississippi River,

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we crisscross the Gulf of Mexico
all the way to Texas,

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and even I sneak into Texas
every now and then and test their waters.

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And you can tell by the bottom oxygen --

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you can draw a map
of everything that's less than two,

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Which is the magic number
for when the fish start to leave the area.

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I also dive in this dead zone.

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We have oxygen meters
that we have to deploy offshore,

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that tell us continuous measurements
of low oxygen or high oxygen.

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And when you get into the water,
there's a lot of fish.

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Tons of fish, all kinds of fish,

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including my buddy here,
the barracuda that I saw one day.

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Everybody else swam this way
and I went this way with my camera.

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(Laughter)

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And then, down at 30 feet
you start to see fewer fish.

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And then you get to the bottom.

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And you don't see any fish.

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There's no life on the platform,
there's no life swimming around.

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And you know you're in the dead zone.

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So, what's the connection
between the middle of the United States

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and the Gulf of Mexico?

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Well, most of the watershed is farmland.

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And in particular, corn-soybean rotation.

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The nitrogen that is put in fertilizers
and the phosphorus goes on the land

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and drains off into the Mississippi River

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and ends up in the Gulf of Mexico.

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There's three times more
nitrogen in the water

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in the Mississippi now,

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than there was in the 1950s.

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Three times.

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And phosphorus has doubled.

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And what that means is more phytoplankton
and more sinking sails and lower oxygen.

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This is not a natural feature of the Gulf,
it's been caused by human activities.

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The landscape is not what it used to be.

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It used to be prairies and forests
and prairie potholes

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and duck areas and all kinds of stuff.

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But not anymore -- it's [unclear] crops.

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And there are ways that we can address
this type of agriculture

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by using less fertilizer,
maybe precision fertilizing.

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And trying some sustainable agriculture,

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such as perennial wheatgrass,
which has much longer roots

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than the six inches of a corn plant,

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that can keep the nitrogen on the soil
and keep the soil from running off.

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And how do we convince
our neighbors to the north,

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maybe 1,000 miles away or more,

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that their activities are causing problems
with water quality in the Gulf of Mexico?

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First of all, we can take them
to their own backyard.

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If you want to go swimming
in Wisconsin, in the summer,

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in your favorite watering hole,

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you might find something like this

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which looks like spilled green paint
and smells like it,

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growing on the surface of the water.

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This is a toxic blue-green algal bloom

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and it is not good for you.

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Similarly, in Lake Erie,
couple of summers ago

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there was hundreds of miles
of this blue-green algae

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and the city of Toledo, Ohio,
couldn't use it for their drinking water

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for several days on end.

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And if you watch the news,

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you know that lots of communities
are having trouble with drinking water.

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I'm a scientist.

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I don't know if you could tell that.

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(Laughter)

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And I do solid science,
I publish my results,

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my colleagues read them,
I get citations of my work.

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But I truly believe that, as a scientist,

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using mostly federal funds
to do the research,

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I owe it to the public,

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to agency heads and congressional people

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to share my knowledge with them

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so they can use it,
hopefully to make better decisions

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about our environmental policy.

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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One of the ways that I was able to do this
is I brought in the media.

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And Joby Warrick
from the "Washington Post"

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put this picture in an article

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on the front page, Sunday morning,
two inches above the fold.

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That's a big deal.

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And Senator John Breaux, from Louisiana,

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said, "Oh my gosh, that's what they think
the Gulf of Mexico looks like?"

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And I said, "Well, you know,
there's the proof."

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And we've go to do something about it.

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At the same time,
Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine

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was having trouble with harmful
algal blooms in the Gulf of Maine.

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They joined forces -- it was bipartisan --

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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And invited me to give
congressional testimony,

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and I said, "Oh, all I've done
is chase crabs around south Texas,

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I don't know how to do that."

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(Laughter)

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But I did it.

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(Member of audience cheers)

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And eventually, the bill passed.

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And it was called -- yeah, yay!

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It was called The Harmful Algal Bloom

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and Hypoxia Research
and Control Act of 1998.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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Which is why we call it
the Snowe-Breaux Bill.

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(Laughter)

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The other thing is
that we had a conference in 2001

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that was put on by
the National Academy of Sciences

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that looked at fertilizers,
nitrogen and poor water quality.

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Our plenary speaker
was the former governor

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of the state of New Jersey.

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And she ...

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There was no thinking she wasn't serious
when she peered at the audience

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and I thought,
"Surely she's looking at me."

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"You know, I'm really tired
of this thing being called New Jersey.

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Pick another state, any state,
I just don't want to hear it anymore."

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But she was able to move the action plan

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across President George H.W. Bush's desk

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so that we had environmental goals

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and that we were working to solve them.

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The Midwest does not feed the world.

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It feeds a lot of chickens, hogs, cattle

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and it generates ethanol

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to put into our gasoline,

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which is regulated by federal policy.

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We can do better than this.

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We need to make decisions

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that make us less consumptive

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and reduce our reliance on nitrogen.

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It's like a carbon footprint.

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But you can reduce
your nitrogen footprint.

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I do it by not eating much meat --

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I still like a little
every now and then --

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not using corn oil,

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driving a car that I can put
nonethanol gas in

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and get better gas mileage.

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Just things like that
that can make a difference.

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So I'm challenging, not just you,

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but I challenge a lot of people,
especially in the Midwest --

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think about how you're treating your land
and how you can make a difference.

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So my steps are very small steps.

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To change the type
of agriculture in the US

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is going to be many big steps.

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And it's going to take political
and social will for that to happen.

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But we can do it.

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I strongly believe
we can translate the science,

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bridge it to policy and make
a difference in our environment.

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We all want a clean environment.

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And we can work together to do this

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so that we no longer have
these dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)