Residents of a luxury, high-end neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro awoke Friday to the unpleasant odour of 13 tonnes of dead fish floating in the water of the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon.
One of the city's picture postcard locations, the lagoon has suffered similar fish die-offs in previous years and biologists believe that extreme heat is the culprit.
Mass die-offs, or "kills", happen periodically throughout the world. They can be caused by pollution or toxic spills, but can also be triggered by natural phenomena, such as hot weather.
Heat reduces the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water, which can prove fatal to marine life.
It is currently summer in Brazil, as it is the rest of the southern hemisphere, and with El Nino emerging in the Pacific Ocean, the season is expected to be hot.
El Nino is the warming of the waters of the Pacific Ocean and is known to affect the weather around the globe. In Brazil, it usually brings hotter weather than usual to the southeast and makes the coastal waters around Rio stagnant.
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