Thousands of fish wash up on Ogeechee River banks, and now people are being warned not to eat from or fish the popular river in five different counties.


"I just ride down here, and I sit and look. I've been doing that for years anyway. I just look at the rivers. Just something to see for me," Nelson Hales said.

Nelson Hales has a sentimental attachment to the Ogeechee River. He's been fishing on the river since he was a little boy and was baptized in the water.

"I've been coming down here for 60 years fishing. ­I used to walk down here and fish when I was a young'n, and I've caught more fish out there I imagine than anybody around here."

For now, there won't be any fishing for Hales. This weekend state wildlife agencies discovered 40 miles of fish kill in the Ogeechee River.

"To what extent: we're still not sure on what's causing the event. We're still unaware and unsure of it as well, so we have a large area of dead fish and because we don't know what's causing it, we issued an advisory to stay out of the water and do not eat the fish that come out of the Ogeechee River until we can figure out what's going on," Walter Wright with Effingham County Emergency Management Agency and Public Safety said.

According to Wright, this is the biggest fish kill that has happened on the Ogeechee River in recent years. Public safety officials said thousands of fish have washed up on the banks in five different counties: Bryan, Chatham, Bulloch, Effingham, and Screven.

"Yesterday when I arrived on the steal bridge, there was probably 200 people in the water swimming, so if course I am advising those people to get out of the water and tell them what's going on. It was a big hurtle. But once we did that, most people did get out of the water. That's our best message that we can give out to the people right now is get out of the water and stay away until we figure out what's going on," Wright said.

Again, people are strongly advised not to swim or eat fish in Bryan, Chatham, Bulloch, Effingham, and Screven Counties. EPD and Department of Natural Resources investigators hope to know what's causing the fish kill by Wednesday. Public safety officials said they tested for the three biggest causes: oxygen level, temperature, and chemicals, but all three seemed to test normal.