Hundreds of thousands of fish dying in Florida's Indian River Lagoon

Mary Papenfuss
International Business Times
Mon, 28 Mar 2016 05:56 UTC

A massive sea of dead fish is clogging Florida's waterways for miles in the latest distressing die off that is rattling scientists. Hundreds of thousands of bloated, decaying fish of nearly every kind known in the area are massed along beaches and choking tributaries and estuaries in the state's Indian River Lagoon ecosystem.

"The heartbreaking images can be seen for miles," Mike Conner, who has been fishing the area for decades, told CNN. "All up and down the coast, it's the same story, and it could get worse before it gets better."

He added: "Our oysters are dead, seagrasses are dead." It will be "hard to recover," he added. "You never fully recover."

The lagoon network is comprised of the Indian River, Mosquito and Banana River lagoons that make up the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway along eastern Florida. It's the most biodiverse lagoon ecosystem in the Northern Hemisphere and is home to more than 3,000 species of plants and animals

Captain Alex Gorichky, a conservationist who runs a small fishing tour company, told the New Times that he's seen "every species of fish in the lagoon" dead, including redfish that have been breeding for 35 years. "The stretch is 30 miles (48km) long, and we're looking at devastating amounts of fish floating throughout that whole stretch," he said. "It's not an isolated incident; we're talking about wide-open expanses of rivers, canals, pockets of water with no tidal flow," he added. "We're going to have a serious problem once they start decaying."

The exact cause hasn't yet been pinpointed, but experts believe the mass die-off is linked to a number of factors. For one, unusually heavy rains from an El Nino year are washing fertilisers and pollutants into waterways, killing the fish. In addition, warmer-than-usual winter temperatures nurtured the growth of a toxic algae bloom and brown tide that depleted the water of oxygen, which is also fatal to fish.

"We have had brown tide there before but nothing to this extent," said a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.

Comment:

Reader Comments

another1 · 2016-03-30T04:56:17Z

This area has had huge algae blooms for over a decade now. Many theories for the anoxic conditions about from State diverted Lake O run off to unreported problems at the FPL St. Lucie nuclear plant just south of this area. Regardless, this is just one more sad that this entire ecosystem might never return to its previous condition.

Rowan Cocoan · 2016-03-30T06:03:26Z

No. Caused by NEW FreshH20 drainage

No. Caused by NEW FreshH20 drainage.

Nope. It’s happening because of reduced salinity in the Indian River Lagoon.

Why? The CAUSE is OBVIOUS. The source/epicenter is near the ‘head’ of the Indian River/Lagoon near where State Road 50 hits US1 West of KSC, about 12 miles north of here.

Why there? Because a few years back, a HUGE drainage pipe was run from out by SR50 and I-95 towards the Indian River. Prior thereto, that water would naturally drain into the St. John’s River Basin, to the NORTH, eventually exiting at Jacksonville into the ocean. Since then, however, it now dumps this water at the head of this brackish lagoon and drains to the south, the first exit point for the fresh water being at Sebastian Inlet 35 to 50 miles to the South.

We've had a long dry spell and then a lot of rains. Magically, it seems, the river stays at the same, HIGH level throughout dry spells now and I would NOT be surprised to learn of affirmative pumping of fresh H20 into it, on top of a massively altered drain field.

I dare say the ‘inspiration’ for this idiot project was to lower the FRESH-WATER St. Johns River while raising the Indian River Lagoon.. Why? Overdevelopment along the shallow banked St. Johns River - as particularly encouraged by the either STUPID or malevolently intentional (most likely the latter) Federal Flood insurance program -

So,. . . The St. Johns ‘floods’ less than naturally, and as to all the idiots who occasionally STILL get flooded, YOU/I/WE each and all pay for their 'river front' St. Johns property, while the Indian River, being must more steeply banked and a brackish/salt water lagoon - which gets more saline as one goes South - is being overloaded from the North with fresh water, reducing its salinity and encouraging such algae blooms, etc.

Have YOU ever seen duckweed or pond scum in salt water?

Cause - Effect.

R.C.

Rowan Cocoan · 2016-03-30T06:21:53Z

HELL! Even the local whore newspaper acknowledges it . . . saying, somewhat*, that development has resulted in decreasing salinity in the IRL (Indian River Lagoon) "for decades."

[Link]

R.C.

*As best befits a local whore newspaper, eh what?

RC