© Jack Hanrahan / Erie Times-NewsJim Grazio, Great Lakes Biologist with the DEP inspects a dead gizzard shad along the northern shore at Misery Bay at Presque Isle State Park on March 22. Thousand of the fish have washed up on the shoreline of Misery Bay. Grazio said that the fish died from natural causes related to temperature changes and that it was a natural event. There were also some other species found along the shoreline including several carp, northern pike and a smallmouth bass. Grazio said that it is the spawning time for northern pike and all of the dead pike found were females. He attributes their death to spawning stress.
Cathy Pedlar and Kathryn Hamilton were walking by Presque Isle State Park's Misery Bay on Tuesday afternoon when they spotted thousands of dead fish along the north shore.
Pedlar said she's seen dead fish before, but never like this.
"I haven't seen this density before," she said.
Park and state officials were notified and a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection official investigated.
"This is a natural fish kill, no cause for alarm," Jim Grazio, a Great Lakes biologist with DEP's Office of the Great Lakes, said after inspecting the dead fish.
He said 99 percent were gizzard shad and he believed their death was a natural event caused by temperature change.
Grazio said the gizzard shad, a freshwater herring, is notoriously sensitive to cold temperatures and temperature changes.
He also said more than the usual number of the fish were born in 2010 for unknown reasons.
"A lot of them didn't survive," he said.
The fish began dying in January and were under the ice, unseen until warmer temperatures caused a melt and the fish began washing up on shore, he said. There wasn't much decay because of the cold.
