Was shocked listening to BBC or NPR few days ago - forget which one and they were talking about the earth's bodies of water that were most denigrated environmentally and they said that the Baltic was the world's biggest stretch of 'dead water'

I've cruised on the Baltic and it seemed so fresh looking - guess looks can be deceiving - it must have been the old East Bloc ports that were dumping such toxic stuff in the Baltic that for wide areas there is little aquatic life?

I'll be sailing on it in a couple weeks. Obviously hard to tell how "dead" it is by looking from the top down unless you count the number of fishing boats, etc.

and it didn't say the whole thing but has the largest stretch of dead water on Earth.

Well, the former East Block still dumps a lot into it. For example St.Petersburg dumps most of its five million inhabitant´s waste in the sea.

Wow, Elina. Glad then that I didn't eat the fish while I was in SP and the Baltics last year! Sorry about going potty, though.

Unfortunately, I am now convinced there are probably people out there who don't believe that S**t happens or exists, as long as the results don't affect them directly...or at least they think they don't.

nor do they think of generations yet unborn.

A quick google on "baltic+dead" turns up an article in the Scandinavian Review which lists the problems in detail.

that type of wastewater dumping isn't that uncommon for cities by the ocean - Miami-Dade County in South Florida dumps a large part of their sewage way out there in the ocean. They do treat it somewhat before then, and I would imagine (although this may be naive) that most places that do this do some treatment on the wastewater prior to discharging.

I did read while researching Lithuania for my father's trip that wildlife there has suffered quite a bit due to poor conservation practices.