A dead zone the size of Connecticut that appears in the gulf every summer was actually smaller than expected, but still larger than it should be.
Dead zones are areas of the ocean without oxygen, rendering them uninhabitable to marine life, LiveScience reported.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted the dead zone would be about 20 percent larger.
The ocean ghost towns are caused by nutrient runoff, which feeds algae blooms. The blooms grow and then die, consuming all the oxygen in the process.
Even though the dead zone is smaller than predicted, it still covers more area than what has been seen in the past.
The oxygen-free zones over the past five years have spanned an average of 5,176 square miles, this year it was 5,840 square miles.
Last year, a drought reduced some of the nutrient runoff, causing the zone to only cover 2,889 square miles, the fourth smallest on record. The area was still the size of Delaware and over twice as large as the 1,900-square mile goal set by the Gulf of Mexico / Mississippi River Watershed Nutrient Task Force.
Researchers believe this year's smaller-than-expected dead zone is a result of strong winds over the gulf which mixed some oxygen into the area.
"A near-record area was expected because of wet spring conditions in the Mississippi watershed and the resultant high river flows which deliver large amounts of nutrients," Nancy Rabalais, Ph.D. executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LLUCON) who led the study, said, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration press release reported. "But nature's wind-mixing events and winds forcing the mass of low oxygen water towards the east resulted in a slightly above average bottom footprint."
Due to financial problems, the researchers won't be able to measure the oxygen levels as often as they once did, WWNO reported.
"Federal funding for the work has been cut substantially," Rabalais said. "We used to do monthly or bimonthly cruises through the spring and into the early fall during the period of the hypoxia. But this year we only went out once."
