BLOOMINGTON - Kristian Gustavson has a special connection to water. The 23-year-old, who spent his early days and summers in Bloomington, became a lifeguard and a swim instructor in high school.

A frequent visitor on the West Coast, he learned how to surf. He later became an instructor in that sport when he attended to the University of California in San Diego.

So, his friends and family weren't surprised when he announced he was going to follow in the wake of his uncles, Bob Gustavson of Bloomington and Greg Gustavson of Carbondale, who took a canoe trip on the Illinois and Mississippi rivers from Pekin to New Orleans in 1966. They were nature lovers looking for adventure.

The youngest Gustavson, whose father, William, still lives in the Twin Cities, had more on his mind. He fears people living in the Midwest are unaware of the damage their pollution does to the oceans he loves miles downstream. He wanted to get a firsthand feel for the situation on the Mississippi River after he completed his political science degree earlier this year. He hopes to draw attention to the problems and encourage people to seek solutions.

"As a surfer, I started to pick up on what was going on in the marine environment," said Gustavson, who graduated high school in Libertyville, where his mom, Anne Veselack, lives. "You actually get into another element, and being in the element, you see things you might not see. It gives you another dimension. I was able to see how actions on land impact the ocean."

Gustavson met scientists who shared similar concerns while he taught surfing at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a research and teaching center connected to the UC at San Diego. He had time to devote to study of the issues during his final semester at school. His conclusion;

"The Mississippi River is the most polluted river in the country," he said.

Much of the problem focuses on pollution that's hard to trace to its exact source, such as farm chemicals washed from fields into the water, he said. They flow to the Gulf of Mexico where they create an area where oxygen levels become too low to support life. In July, NOAA-supported scientists from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium found the size of this year's Gulf of Mexico dead zone to be nearly 8,000 square miles, the second largest dead zone on record since measurements began in 1985. The zone is larger than the land area of the state of Massachusetts. Scientists think the dead zone would have been larger if not for Hurricane Dolly's wind and waves that may have added oxygen to the zone to reduce its size.

"The continuing presence of a large dead zone highlights the need to implement ways to reduce the amount of nutrients coming from the Mississippi River watershed which have contributed to the dead zone growth in recent years," said Rob Magnien, director of NOAA's Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research. "Reducing nutrient pollution to protect coastal resources is one of the greatest ecosystem management challenges that we face nation-wide."

Studies overtime indicate nitrogen levels in the Gulf have tripled during the past 50 years from human activities.

"The strong link between nutrients and the dead zone indicates that excess nutrients from the Mississippi River watershed during the spring are the primary human-influenced factor behind the expansion of the dead zone," said Rob Magnien, director of the NOAA Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research.

Last July, conservation groups from states bordering the Mississippi River asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take concrete steps to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi River basin. They said Illinois contributes about 17 percent of the total nitrogen and 13 percent of the total phosphorus that reaches the Gulf of Mexico making Illinois the largest overall polluter of the nine states involved.

"Illinois should not be proud of this No. 1 rating," said Stacy James of the Champaign-based Prairie Rivers Network.

Upset by what he learned, Gustavson joined the Surfriders Foundation (www.surfridersfoundation.org), an environmental group dedicated to cleaning up the oceans.

"I thought, 'Wow. This is a big deal.' Why isn't someone else doing this?" he said "It was hard to be a surfer and close my eyes to what was going on. A lot of surfers feel the same way."

The next step came when he decided to travel the course of the Illinois River and the Mississippi rivers as his uncles had done. Finding a canoe wasn't a problem. The same aluminum craft his uncles purchased in Chicago more than 40 years ago and that he and his father had used when he was a boy was still stored at the Bloomington home of his grandmother, Helen Gustavson.

The fact the Mississippi River was experiencing historic flood levels didn't frighten him off, though he did postpone the start once. He also changed the launch site from Pekin to Cairo to avoid locks that were shut down.

"The river was very high, very fast and very unsafe. But, it was a unique time to see the river at the 100-year flood stage. Since I was trying to raise awareness, I thought I would proceed cautiously but go ahead and do it," he said. "The first thing I saw was a tree floating by. I thought, 'Well, here we go.' It was very humbling to step out and go it alone."

The high water gave Gustavson a chance to see how humans have altered the character of the Mississippi River to their detriment. For example, he saw several breached levees that were built to control flooding. But, the waterway historically dumped its rich nutrients in the backwaters during floods and then released water slowly back into the channel. Without the backwaters. the chemicals are being pushed on downstream to the Gulf.

Gustavson also saw plastic waste wherever he looked.

"The plastic was absolutely disgusting. Every shoreline had plastic bags in trees. Plastic bottles were everywhere," he said.

He saw a house washed up on a beach north of Memphis and a car south of the city, where his father joined him in Memphis to help paddle the canoe in the rushing current.

Still, the river provided a home to shorebirds of all kinds, deer, wild turkey and bald eagles. He saw an alligator on shore at one point.

"I was glad we were staying with a friend that night instead of camping out," he said.

He met friendly people along the way.

"Everyone wanted to share their stories of the river. People use that river like a life line. It's really part of their everyday life. Even though they might not be fishermen or work on barges, they have a connection to it …They're concerned about drinking-water quality, flooding…"

Intense ship traffic led the Gustavsons to end the trip in Louisiana before reaching the Gulf.

"But, just doing Cairo to Baton Rouge opened my mind to the beauty of the river, its subtle force. After three weeks, it has all the respect I can give it. I saw the power of river. The Mississippi River is beyond words."

In the short term, Gustavson wants to stay on the course he's set in the field of environmental action. He's launched a non-profit organization called Below the Surface and a Web site at ww.belowthesurface.org to make waves and raise money for what he knows will be a long fight. Pollution, water quality and even ample water supply are going to be making headlines in years to come, he said.

"Global warming has gotten a lot of attention, but water has gone by the wayside. But, particularly in the south and southwest, the water situation is really going to get interesting. … It's going to get hard for a lot of people. There are shortages already," he said.

Earlier this year, researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography predicted a 50-percent chance Lake Mead, which supplies water to millions of people in the southwest, will be dry by 2021 "if the climate changes as expected and future water use is not limited."

"There are already efforts to conserve in Southern California," he said.

But he thinks most people remain in denial. He told a story about how he was helping out at a surf shop in Southern California while wildfires burned nearby. Though people were told to conserve water, he saw cars line up at a nearby car wash before motorists realized the business was closed due to the emergency.

"I thought this is ridiculous. That's how bad it is, the epiphany of - I hate to say it - the ignorance," he said.

Gustavson is unsure of his long range plans.

"Just like the river I can only see what's up to the next bend. But I'm eager to get to it and see what's around it. I just want to follow my passion. It's got me this far," he said.