Tens of thousands of dead fish wash ashore on South Carolina beach
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Thousands of dead fish washed up on mile and a half stretch of beach in South Carolina Tuesday, officials said, at least the second such occurrence in the region in a week.
Roughly 30,000 to 40,000 menhaden fish, 6 to 8 inches long, were spread along the shore from DeBordieu Beach in Georgetown County, S.C., to Pawleys Island, a town on the state's Atlantic Coast, and thousands more were expected, Pawleys Island Police Chief Michael Fanning said.
Similar incidents have happened in the area before, including late last week when hundreds of thousands of the small, oily fish were washed ashore near Masonboro Island, N.C., and last year when an influx of dead starfish were found on the same beaches.
The fish were first spotted by beachgoers taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather.
"We came down to the beach for the day just to have, you know, a nice day on the beach, smell the fish smell, came down to look for shells and all these fish -- dead," Pawleys Island resident Pat Hawkins told NBC station WMBF in Myrtle Beach, S.C. "It's a shame. I don't know what's causing it."
Officials from the Department of Health and Environmental Control and the Department of Natural Resources visited the area Tuesday and took water samples in an effort to determine what killed the fish.
Marine experts determined the fish died from hypoxia, which occurs when the amount of oxygen in the water drops.
“On Friday we had a new moon (which caused) real high high tides and real low low tides,” Belltold The Sun News. “Probably what happened was a school (of menhaden) got in an area of water on a high tide, in a hole or depression, and at low tide they were trapped and depleted the oxygen in the water. Then, all the fish would suffocate. Then, when the tide came back in, it washed the dead fish out and they washed up on the beach.”Mel Bell, director of the Office of Fisheries Management for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, said the occurrence was an entirely natural event.
"When it's one species like that, that's usually indicative of a low dissolved oxygen situation because they tend to be more fragile," added Dan Hitchcock, an assistant professor at the Baruch Institute of Coastal Ecology and Forest Science at Clemson University in Georgetown, S.C.
Fanning said the city has no plans to clean up the fish and will let the seagulls and the tide clear the sand.
“We’re just dealing with it as a force of nature," Fanning said. "There are some residual fish, most of it has gotten washed away, there were a ton of birds down there. If you went down there (Thursday), you’d get more birds than fish.”
Menhaden fish, typically used by fishermen as bait, are a small, silver fish, whose oil is used in vitamin supplements, lipstick and livestock feed.
source: http://usnews
California: Thousands of Dead Fish Wash Ashore at Pawleys Island
Shoreline covered with thousands of menhaden fish appear but scientists believe mass deaths a natural event
By EWAN PALMER: Subscribe to Ewan's RSS feed
January 17, 2013 2:24 PM GMT
The scene on the beach (Pawleys Island Police)
Thousands of dead fish have been washed up on a beach at Pawleys Island in south California - the second such occurrence in a week.
Police have confirmed thousands of menhaden fish were found dead and thousands more were expected.
Hundreds of thousands of the small, oily fish were washed ashore near Masonboro Island outside Wilmington in north California. The Department of Natural Resources has been notified of the latest incident.
Scientists believed the deaths were a natural event because oxygen levels in the water had plummeted to nearly zero.
Pawley Island Sgt Steve Pop told WBTV: "It's an occurrence called hypoxia.
"That is dissolved oxygen levels in the water that drop to a level that is not sustainable for the fish."
"We've got some deep holes off the north inlet that holds these fish," Pop added. "This time of year the fish congregate in these holes which is depleting the oxygen source."
Source: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk
Sarasota County removes dead fish from south county public beaches
Posted: Thursday, January 17, 2013 11:53 am | Updated: 12:02 pm, Thu Jan 17, 2013.
Sarasota County staff members working with non-violent offenders from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Offender Work Program have been deployed to Caspersen Beach, 4100 Harbor Drive, Venice, to remove dead fish that have washed ashore. Cleanup efforts also have been scheduled today for county-owned beaches, including Manasota Beach, Blind Pass Beach, Venice Beach and others. The suspected cause of the fish kill is a red tide bloom located offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.
The dead fish started washing ashore earlier this week. County staff, including lifeguards and employees of Parks and Recreation, will continue to monitor all public beaches for impacts of red tide, and will respond as the need arises.
Residents and visitors with asthma or chronic respiratory impairments who are planning to visit a local beach are encouraged to be aware of beach conditions where red tide impacts are being reported. For those who are susceptible, the symptoms associated with red tide tend to become more noticeable when the winds are blowing onshore.
Current beach conditions can be found online at Mote Marine Laboratory's website,www.mote.org/beaches. Residents and visitors also can register to receive email reports about specific beaches. For telephone updates, call 941-BEACHES (232-2437) and press "1" for Sarasota County beaches.
source: http://www.mysuncoast.com
Hundreds of thousands of dead fish reported on Masonboro Island
MASONBORO ISLAND, NC (WECT) – Hundreds of thousands of dead fish have been reported this week at Masonboro Island by state environmental officials, according to a spokesperson for the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
Environmental officials explain that the fish, Atlantic menhaden, which travel in very large groups, took a wrong turn, up Loosins Creek.
In under an hour, the area caused dissolved oxygen levels in the water to drop to close to zero, which ended up killing them.
As a result, the dead fish have been discovered along the island's beaches and in the water.
Officials say they've noticed a pattern of dead fish in winter months and attribute it to the menhaden tightening their school.
Workers with Coastal Management, Water Quality and Marine Fisheries are keeping an eye on the area, and throughout the weekend, dead fish will probably continue to surface.
The workers have a monitoring station set up that checks the water for dissolved oxygen levels, temperature, pH levels and other data.
"This may be the first time we have had continuous monitoring of water quality in an area at the exact time of a fish kill," said Jim Gregson, Surface Water Protection supervisor for the state Division of Water Quality, in a statement. "The data recorded by Coastal Management's monitoring station was a big help in determining the cause of this event."
"You want to make sure it's not an algae or something that could be a concern for human health and a lot of times, you don't know what caused it," said Stephanie Garrett, who is with NCDENR. "Being able to look at what the physical conditions were at the time, you can see that they just ran out of oxygen."
Officials say that while the dead fish don't necessarily pose a danger to humans, they want to make visitors aware of the occurrence.
read more at http://www.wect.com
PHOTO: Dead fish
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Purwakarta, Java — A fisherman looks at dead fish floating near the Jatiluhur dam at Purwakarta, West Java, yesterday. Thousands of tons of dead fish were found following torrential rains around the area. (Photo:AP)
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Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/PHOTO--Dead-fish_13415778#ixzz2IHmQv7np
Low Oxygen Levels Kill an Estimated 2,000 Fish in Grand Island Lake NEBRASKA
KHGI-TV/KWNB-TV/KHGI-CD-Grand Island, Kearney, Hastings
Wildlife officials are investigating after an estimated 2,000 dead fish have turned up in one Grand Island lake.
An angler ice fishing on Suchs Lake reported the fish kill to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission last week.
"We had an angler who went over there to the lake to ice fish last week, and when he started drilling holes through the ice to fish, he noticed some dead fish floating up through them," fish and wildlife biologist Brad Eifert, of the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, said.
A preliminary investigation revealed that low oxygen levels in the water led to the die-off, Eifert said.
"We had oxygen levels below one part per million, which is lethal to most fish species," he said.
One cause for those low oxygen levels, he said, could be the recent snow fall, covering the lake's surface, making it impossible for fish to breathe.
"The heavy snow cover inhibits sunlight penetration into the water," Eifert said, "which doesn't allow the plants to photosynthesize and produce oxygen, so when that happens, the plants actually use oxygen and then the oxygen levels drop fairly rapidly."
Officials say these kinds of fish kills aren't uncommon, but they usually occur later in the winter season.
"Normally they happen later in the year," Eifert said. "We haven't had ice for very long -- about three weeks now or about a month -- and the snow cover really wasn't as thick as we sometimes get, so it was a little unusual that way."
"It's a natural occurrence, it happens throughout the Midwest and it seems to happen to a lot of the smaller lakes and ponds," Todd McCoy, director of the Grand Island Parks and Recreation Department, said.
Also adding to the problem, city officials say, is the large number of geese that inhabit the lake.
"Sometimes the waterfowl with their deposits in the lake sometimes can make the lake not as clear, and that reduces the visibility, reduces the light that gets into the lake," McCoy said. "And in the winter time when you get the ice on top of the lake, you get snow on top of the lake, and then if you have murky conditions then some of the plants don't grow, and that reduces the oxygen levels."
So how will the die-off affect fishing at the popular lake?
"There'll be less fish in there for anglers to catch this spring, and probably a lot smaller fish for people to catch," Eiefert said.
But experts say it's likely that some of the fish will survive.
"The ones that do survive will actually grow larger, and they'll actually thrive a little bit more now that they'll have a little more space, a little more oxygen for them," McCoy said.
Officials plan to go in to the lake in the spring when it thaws and remove all the dead fish, which they say could cause a strong odor for a while.
"There'll be a lot of dead, floating carcasses, but they typically decompose rather quickly," McCoy said. "The smell will be around for a week or two, and then be gone."
Eifert says replacing the possible thousands of fish lost will be costly. At about $1.50 per fish, restocking the lake could add up to about $3,000.
Red tide reported off Collier beaches
PHOTO BY COREY PERRINE // BUY THIS PHOTO
Dead fish have washed ashore on North Naples beaches as a red tide continues to hang on offshore of Southwest Florida, Collier County beach monitors reported Wednesday.
Red tide is a bloom of microscopic algae that releases a toxin that can kill marine life and cause respiratory irritation in humans, including as recently as early last week. The county is warning people with emphysema and asthma to avoid the beaches.
One beach goer estimated that Barefoot Beach was littered with one dead fish every five feet for a mile, and 20 fish were reported on Vanderbilt Beach north to Wiggins Pass, county pollution control worker Rhonda Watkins said.
Watkins said the county's regular beach rake routine picked up the Vanderbilt Beach fish, but beach raking is not allowed on Barefoot Beach, which is within a preserve area.
Satellites are tracking patches of elevated to high chlorophyll levels stretching offshore from southern Pinellas to Collier counties. More water samples are scheduled to be taken from the beaches Thursday.
Water samples collected earlier this week showed red tide at very low levels at Vanderbilt Beach and Seagate and at low levels at the Naples Pier and South Marco Beach.
To report dead fish or red tide symptoms, call 239-252-2502. Red tide updates are available by calling the county's hotline at 239-252-2591.
source: http://www.naplesnews.com
