UD marine scientists Wei-Jun Cai and David Kirchman have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest
Credit: (Kimberly Paynter/WHYY)
The Delaware River in 2018
The level of oxygen in the Delaware River has drastically improved over the past several decades, but there is still more work to do.
Since efforts to reduce human and industrial pollution in the river started in the 1960s and ’70s, so-called dead zones in the waterway have been largely reduced as well. Those dead zones had been especially prevalent in the Philadelphia portion of the Delaware, meaning fish and other aquatic organisms were unable to survive throughout that stretch of water. Fifty years ago, the dead zone stretched 25 miles, from Philadelphia down to Marcus Hook.