I’ve been on vacation in a beachfront condo on Indian Rocks beach for the past three weeks. Most mornings I take a walk, about a mile out and a mile back along the beach. This afternoon, about 6 pm, I went out for a similar walk. At first approaching the beach I smelled dead fish, and I thought that some weekend fishers must have left some on the beach near our place to rot. As I walked along I noticed several clusters of dead fish. As I got about 0.3 or so miles along I was disturbed by how many dead fish I’d seen. Most were smallish, but a couple were larger. I’m not a biologist, so I don’t know the correct name for all of these, but there were many “pufferfish”, many of a small, indistinct species that I can’t even guess a name, some that looked like snook, some that I think (but not sure) are monkfish (very odd looking with mouths on the bottom and much broader in the front than the back, a couple of types of eels, and maybe one or two more types. Some had been picked at by the seabirds (there are a lot near here; it’s a seabird sanctuary), and some were whole. One or two had just beached and seemed that they might even still be (barely) alive, others might have been there for more than a day.
I cut my walk short, since it wasn’t very pleasant, and counted dead fish on the way back. I got up to 191 dead fish in the approx. 1/3 mile back to my place. On previous days I might have seen 1-3, tops, in a mile.
So my question is: what the heck is killing these things? I checked the local news websites for warnings about an algae bloom, but didn’t see anything. I know that there was a spill of raw sewage into the Inter Coastal Waterway, not far from here, about a week or so back. Madeira Beach, north of John’s Pass, was closed for a while (and may still be closed) because of high pollution/bacteria counts. That is about four beaches south of here.
There have also been some stories in the local media about an abandoned phosphate mine in Manatee County. The effluent there is a waiting disaster and the (state?) government is going to ship the stuff 120 miles out into the Gulf, in prime breeding grounds of course, to dump. But as far as I know this hasn’t happened yet.
Any ideas or answers on what is causing the fish kill? Or any ideas on what local agencies to contact for information? Beyond spoiling my morning walks and evening sunsets, I am more than a little leary of letting my young kids swim in the Gulf or even play on the beach at this point. I’d like to know if this is a logical conclusion or me over-reacting.