Dead Zones can get you all 'pumped up'

The waters off the Oregon Coast have been troubled in recent yeats by reoccurring "dead zones" with massive fish die-offs. One such zone is located off Newport. Scientists still do not understand exactly what is causing this phenomenon, but they are zeroing in on probable causes. Unlike other dead zones in the world caused by man-made problems, Oregon's dead zones seem to be triggered by natural forces. Specifically, wind driven currents which bring up nutrient-rich but oxygen-poor water from the ocean's depths.
The bottom line here is the oxygen levels in the water seem to drop rather quickly and dramatically, suffocating the fish. This deoxygenation causes the marine life to push ever upward just trying to breathe. Bottom fish, crabs and shellfish who cannot migrate quickly enough simply die off. Others eventually die as the rest of the food chain collapses.
This natural phenomenon would go largely unnoticed were it not for the monitoring of the fisheries along the coast of Oregon by various groups. One local new-age group says it is a convergence of energy lines cleansing Mother Gia's polluted places and we should welcome these dark renewals. OK...right!
This dead zone thing has seemingly made an impossible (if not existential) jump — to my wife's fish tank.
One morning she found one of her fish sucked into the filter pump. As she plucked it out I delivered his epitaph, quoting the Commodore (James Coburn) from the movie Maverick, regarding the demise of the "Spaniard"...
"Poor dead bastard!"
Several days later, though, she found another had suffered the same fate. As I was repeating my epitaph she plucked him out. To our surprise, he swam out of her hand, and began zipping around the tank… apparently FULLY oxygenated.
While our second fish died rather quickly after his encounter with the mother of all oxygen masks, all this strange behavior left me puzzled. I couldn't figure it out until I heard about the dead zones in the ocean and the untimely deaths of the fish as they searched for more oxygen.
Our fish were not desperately trying to stay alive, they were just stupid guppies trying to get "pumped up" (they were both males after all).
Like the dead zones off our coast we may never know the exact cause of all these strange phenomenon, but I'm sure there is a lesson to be learned here… somewhere.