Global Courant
This week, beachgoers in Texas along the Gulf Coast may have seen something surprising along coastlines: Thousands of dead fish may have washed up on the sand.
A couple walking along Quintana Beach near Freeport spotted fish scattered for miles along the coast. according to CNN affiliate KSAT.
“I was hoping to take advantage of the flat surf and catch a quick load of speckled trout, but unfortunately things didn’t go as planned!” said Darrell Schoppe, who posted a video of the fish to Facebook, KSAT reported.
Other videos and photos on social media showed piles of mostly small fish covering the edge of the beach during what conservationists have described as a “low dissolved oxygen event.”
The Menhaden of the Gulf, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says is the largest fishery yield in the Gulf of Mexicois the species most affected by this fish kill, according to conservationists.
Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Kills and Spills Team Region 3 was investigating what’s happening along the coast, spokesman Lerrin Johnson said in a statement to CNN.
The team of biologists is investigating fish and wildlife deaths caused by natural events and pollution.
“This kind of fish kill is common in the summer when temperatures rise,” Johnson said.
“If there isn’t enough oxygen in the water, fish can’t ‘breathe’,” she added.
Low dissolved oxygen is a natural phenomenon in many cases, according to Johnson.
Patty Brinkmeyer, park supervisor at Quintana Beach County Park, told CNN that “hundreds of thousands” of fish have likely washed up on a six-mile stretch of beach since she first observed the event Friday morning.
“You could literally see a transverse mass of fish floating on the water,” Brinkmeyer said. “It looked like a big blanket.”
She has worked at the park for 17 years and said this was the third time she had washed up some fish on the beach.
“This is by far the most” she has ever seen, Brinkmeyer said on Saturday.
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Colder water tends to hold more oxygen, and the warmer seawater along Quintana Beach could have contributed to the menhaden kill, park officials said on Facebook.
Before any fish dies, conservationists say fish can often be seen trying to gasp for oxygen in the early hours of the morning.
Conservationists say low oxygen levels in the water are the reason dead fish have washed up along the Texas Gulf Coast. – Quintana Beach County Park/Facebook
“Some fish may also be on the bottom or at the edge of the water,” Johnson said in a statement.
Sunlight-driven photosynthesis creates more dissolved oxygen during the day, according to Johnson.
“Photosynthesis stops at night and can slow down on cloudy days, but plants and animals in the water continue to breathe and consume free oxygen, decreasing the dissolved oxygen concentration,” she said.
Crews at Quintana Beach County Park, located on Quintana Island, were raking all the fish they could find Saturday morning, according to the park’s Facebook page.
The post warned potential visitors not to expect the fish to be completely cleaned up.
“Our recommendation is that you avoid the beach altogether until this event is over,” the post read, with park officials advising that no one enter the water.
“There are dead fish floating around everywhere, that can’t be healthy,” Brinkmeyer said. “You don’t want to walk through that.”
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