- About 70,000 dead fish, sting rays and other marine life washed into the suburban California harbor over the weekend
- Local experts claim warmer waters caused oxygen-stifling algae to bloom
- The mess was mostly cleaned up by late Sunday
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Tens of
thousands of dead fish floated into a southern California harbor this
weekend, and officials are not saying why it happened.
Anchovies, sting rays and other dead marine life numbering as many as 70,000 blanketed the surface of Marina Del Rey Saturday afternoon, and locals have come up with a number of theories as to how it happened.
The layer of fish sent birds into a feeding frenzy and bait fisherman scrambling to snag as much free bait as they could before work crews cleaned up the mess – it also created a foul odor that permeated the air.
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Mass kill: More than 70,000 dead fish floated to the surface of Marina del Rey this weekend
Mass grave: Some of the thousands of dead fish were found floating in Marina del Rey this weekend
Oxygen starved: The Los Angeles County Sheriff's
office said the dead anchovies, stingrays and even an octopus rose to
the surface at a section of the harbor Saturday evening
‘It was like a Hitchcock movie,’ Michael Quill told KABC. ‘There were so many birds diving into the water and feeding. You could see the silver of the fish underwater, it was crazy.’
Several people speculated that warmer weather may have caused an algae bloom leading to a lack of oxygen that doomed the fish.
Benjamin
Kay, a marine biologist, told the station called the inlet an ‘oxygen
dead zone,’ and said that heated water ‘can't hold oxygen as normal as
if it were cooler, then we get these massive fish kills.
‘This is a classic harbor event.’
‘This is a classic harbor event.’
Marine activist Matthew King, of Heal the Bay, told KNBC that ‘hot weather always has been associated with low oxygen levels in the water.’
Gold mine: A fisherman sets adrift to scoop up as much as he can
'A classic harbor event': Marine biologists
believe a lack of oxygen in the water, caused by this week's heat wave,
may have led to the massive fish kill
Up close: The tens of thousands of dead fish have also created a horrible smell that has permeated the area
Dead zone: The enclosed nature of the marina makes it an 'oxygen dead zone,' according to one expert
Massive effort: A worker shown among the hundreds of garbage bags of dead fish hauled from the site
The
disturbing deaths occur almost once a year, the marine biologist
argued, but at least one long-time resident in the community about four
miles from Los Angeles International Airport disagreed.
‘I’ve been here for about 20 years and this is the first time I’ve seen a fish kill like this one,’ Tom Difloure told KTLA.
Workers
had cleaned up most of the dead fish, and their unbearable stench by
late Sunday, KNBC reported. About 175 garbage bags weighing a combined
7,000 pounds were taken away.
But the horrific smell lingered and questions remained.
Local
officials were not able to be immediately reached by MailOnline, and
they have not given an official cause of the kill-off.
Read more:
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2632893/Tens-thousands-dead-fish-wash-Marina-del-Rey-officials-not-said-why.html#ixzz32E4AYgv9
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