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On 23 April 2016, a photograph purportedly showing where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico started circulating on Facebook along with the claim that these two bodies of water never mix. Subsequent postings of the image included an additional (misspelled) claim, that this lack of mixing is proof of God's existence: Although some viewers proclaimed that this visual effect was a beautiful creation of God, this image actually shows a man-made hypoxic event that is harmful to the environment. The image was actually taken from a video originally published by Marlin Magazine in November 2015: This video captured a fluctuating dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which is caused when high-nutrient water full of nitrogen and phosphorus from the Mississippi River pours into the Gulf. That leads to large algae blooms, altered food chains, and hypoxic (oxygen deficient) waters: These dead zones tend to occur in the summer and fluctuate in size. According to a fact sheet published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average size of the dead zone is around 6,000 square miles. While the above-quoted Facebook posts claim that these waters do not mix, they do — and the water from the Mississippi River has a major effect on marine life in the Gulf of Mexico: The image at the top of this post also doesn't show a static line drawn between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. While the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium called this dead zone a recurring environmental problem, the distinct color differences are not a permanent year-round fixture. While the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is man made, a similar aesthetic is achieved naturally in other parts of the world, such as the Gulf of Alaska, where glacial rivers mix with the ocean.
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