Oregon Sea Grant director Stephen Brandt will give a public talk tonight about  findings from six seasons of subsurface exploration in the low-oxygen waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico. And he’ll share what was different about this year’s cruise, which began after the United States’ largest recorded oil well blow-out was capped in July.

The informal talk starts at 6 pm at the Old World Deli in Corvallis, as part of the Science Pub series.

“Recently there has been an alarming increase, in the spatial and temporal extent of low-oxygen conditions in estuarine and coastal waters,” said Brandt. “We call them ‘dead zones’ in the media because we presume there are drastic impacts on living resources such as shrimp and fish.”

In his talk, Brandt will show how low-oxygen conditions, which scientists call “hypoxia,” can affect habitat quality, food webs and growth rates. Some fish, he added, may actually benefit from these conditions.

Brandt’s team, which has been collecting subsurface data on ocean conditions and marine life in the Gulf for six years, received a National Science Foundation emergency response grant this year to do another sampling cruise following the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster. He kept a blog during the trip.

Science Pub Corvallis is part of a series of free, informal science lectures sponsored at pubs around the state by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry; the Corvallis lectures are cosponsored by OSU’s Terra magazine and the Downtown Corvallis Association.