Just one week after the sightings of three beluga whales, another phenomenon occurred in the waters of Manhasset Bay. On May 29, thousands of dead fish washed up along the shore of Long Island. Port residents spotted the dead fish and dying bunker fish on the morning of May 29 in Manhasset Bay. Following the first sighting, tens of thousands of dead fish washed up near where Flanders Bay meets the Peconic River.
The fish are said to have washed up because of low levels of oxygen in the Peconic River. On May 28, the oxygen levels were reported at zero for a brief period of time, followed by another drop to zero on May 29 and May 30, which lasted up to eight hours.
“The fish entered the river in large groups, and as they were coming, they ran right into the low oxygen,” said Dr. Christopher Gobler, of the Long Island Costal Conservation Research Alliance and a research professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.
The low levels of oxygen stem from a mahogany tide, which is a type of algae that brings low levels of oxygen. Gobler said that the algae are in the river because of the high levels of nitrogen in the water. The nitrogen can be from human waste and other things dumped into the river.
“There was a way to prevent this,” said Gobler. “You don’t see this happening in other places.” There are usually small amounts of fish killed every year, but Gobler said that this is excessive.
Either all the fish have died or their migration is over, because there hasn’t been another sighting of fish that have washed up.
