Scientists study Lake Erie's 'Dead Zone'

This could make for the plot of a horror story if I ever get back into the groove of writing fiction. From the Detroit Free Press:

An expanding, oxygen-starved "dead zone" in Lake Erie is generating a massive international mobilization of scientists, high-tech equipment and research vessels to find clues to the biological mystery.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Ann Arbor-based Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory will lead the 2-year study, one of the largest such probes of Lake Erie.

Launched this week, the study involves dozens of experts from Canada, Great Lakes states, universities and federal agencies. Potential factors contributing to the dead zone include the zebra mussel, low water levels and fertilizer runoff from large factory farms, experts say.

"We not only want to find out why this is happening, we want to find out how it might affect the food web and what the consequences might be," Stephen Brandt, director of the research lab, said Monday.

Too bad reality is providing too many horrors. Fictional horrors need not apply.