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- Title
A deeper history of the 'world's largest dead zone' in the Gulf of Oman.
- Authors
ERICH, SCOTT T.
- Abstract
This article attempts to trace a deeper history of a 'dead zone'--the term for areas of the ocean with lower than normal amounts of dissolved oxygen--in the Gulf of Oman. Due to the paucity of oceanographic data before the late twentieth century, this article reviews a range of British imperial travelogues and fisheries records with an eye to knowledge gleaned from contemporary scientific knowledge of the phenomenon. Although imperial sources do not discuss the issue directly (the science of dead zones was not articulated until the mid-twentieth century), they serve as sources of valuable indirect data pointing to the presence of accompanying phenomena of low-oxygen waters--large-scale blooms of the bioluminescent plankton Noctiluca scintillans and fluctuations in fish stocks--long before the 'discovery' of 'the world's largest dead zone' in 2018. This approach yields a deeper view of the sea's changes through time instead of accepting the sensationalist immediacy of contemporary journalistic accounts, and impels us to take seriously the wisdom of local fishers as a counterweight to scientific knowledge. In doing so, it hopes to advance a scholarly conversation about mixed methods in environmental history and Indian Ocean studies, and about the paradoxes and contradictions of life in the 'Anthropocene'.
- Subjects
GULF of Oman; DISSOLVED oxygen in water; OCEANOGRAPHY; NOCTILUCA; JOURNALISTS
- Publication
International Review of Environmental History, 2023, Vol 9, Issue 1, p121
- ISSN
2205-3204
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.22459/ireh.09.01.2023.07