Excerpt from CNN
Thousands of dead fish washed ashore on a beach at Sebastian Inlet State Park in Florida. A similar incident happened in a Port Orange creek last month.
This follows similar incidents where large schools of fish were found lifeless on beaches in Arkansas, Maryland – two million fish were found dead on shores in Chesapeake Bay- and New Zealand in January. Only last month thousands of dead fish were found floating in a warm creek in Port Orange, Florida.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) biologists are in the midst of carrying out tests on water samples but they do not suspect that chemicals or cold temperatures are to blame. They believe a lack of oxygen resulted in the deaths of thousands of menhaden fish.
FWC biologist, Kelli O’Donnell, said: ‘Just because there’s such a large school of them, they use up the oxygen really quickly, and because they are coming closer to shore, there’s not as high of a water turnover rate sometimes when you’re in an area with not as much tidal flow.
The officials say this type of fish is especially prone to dying from a lack of oxygen when they swim closer to shore in such large numbers.
CNN Video
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B92KRfK-BgI[/youtube]
