Millions of Dead Fish in Redondo
 

Anyone watching the news on this?

Looks like its mostly anchovies but the live pictures of this is jaw dropping.

Free Lobster bait! Yea i saw that its crazy the fishing might be better less bait in there now.

http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/f...s/deadfish.jpg

http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/f.../deadfish3.jpg

http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/f.../deadfish2.jpg

Wow those pics show more then the ones i saw.

This is nuts, and it's going to smell terrible in another day or so!

Weird! It's probably a good thing though because I heard there was miles and milves of fin bait from LJ all the way up to LA. Pretty crazy sight though. You gotta love Mother Nature.

Wow - that is incredible. Bait barge sink somewhere?

This is not the first time that happened there. They get red tides there and the birds and seals go crazy. Everyone is going to be hosing down their boats due to all that bird poop.

This used to happen in Santa Cruz when i was a kid, in years where Anchovies would show up in numbers, they eventually installed aerators at various locations of the docks, turning the whole harbor into a big fish tank.

I dont think i ever saw it as bas as that bad though.

The bugs are going to huge in Dondo!

my 2 cents, dines took a wrong turn and hanged themselves :(

Anchovies will die in warm water. Cold water current must of taken a diffrent direction ending the life of these anchovies/sardines run.

I cannot imagine how bad this is going to smell by tomorrow. I hope they have some big scoopers going right now.

I studied Nosetodumass, and this was predicted ...Quatrain 20:11

" As the silver shall be in numerous amounts as far as the eye can see, in the harbor of the king"

"The stink of wealth shall be great"

Yeah...it is written.....:cool:

lol

I just heard this on the radio, I figured it would be posted up on here. Those pics are nuts.

Im new to ocean fishing but doesnt a lot of bait in the water mean better fishing? wont this be a negative impact?

So far every time i go and fish its really tough fishing when there is so much bait in the water. But im still new to this to i could be wrong to think the fishing is better when the is a moderate amount of bait not tons of it some one correct me if im wrong please.

Those are not anchovies they are herring or sardines. Have not looked into it yet but from the pics it's easy to see they are too big to be anchovies...

Whatever they are they're dead and they're going to start smelling like a whorehouse after a busy weekend.


Here's the LA Times Report...All they needed was a little CPR.

Redondo Beach fish die-off: Tests show oxygen levels at 'almost zero

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March 8, 2011 | 2:37 pm

Researchers have measured critically low oxygen levels in King Harbor after a massive die-off in the Redondo Beach marina.
Brent Scheiwe, program director at the SEA Lab in Redondo Beach, said he took dissolved oxygen level readings in the harbor after the first reports of the dead fish came in Tuesday morning and found them at almost zero.
“The levels were critically low," he said. "There was pretty much no oxygen in the water."
Photos: Massive fish die-off in King Harbor Marina
Scientists are working to determine what caused oxygen levels to drop so steeply that fish estimated to be in the millions suffocated and deposited a silver sheen of carcasses, many of them sardines, among the rows of docked boats. It may be days before the precise cause is known.
Marine biologists at USC installed oxygen sensors in King Harbor after an algal bloom caused a mass fish die-off in 2005. They are now probing the harbor for clues about the cause of the latest kill, said biological sciences professor David Caron.
“What we're trying to tease apart is whether it's a consequence of algal buildup, a fish buildup or something toxic in the water,” Caron said.
Massive, stinking fish kills also struck King Harbor in 2003 and 2005. Both times, algae blooms robbed the harbor waters of life-enriching oxygen, causing fish to suffocate and die.
Despite efforts by boat owners to scoop up the dead fish, the rafts of decomposing flesh unleashed a powerful stench that plagued the harbor for weeks after each episode. Some boat owners complained of feeling sick from the smell. Others were driven off their boats to seek refuge inland. Waterfront restaurants suffered steep declines in customers, unable to compete with the unsavory odor that hugged the harbor.
Such fish kills have been popping up around the world in what one Louisiana scientist calls “dead zones.” She has spent a career studying America’s largest one, which strikes nearly ever year in an expanse of the Gulf of Mexico about the size of the state of New Jersey.
The cause of the die-off is nearly always decaying algae. Although the oceans are awash in algae, these microscopic organisms bloom when fed by nutrients such as fertilizers and human and animal waste washing off the land. Stoked by such nutrients and exposed to sunlight, algae flourish and then die and sink to the bottom. Bacteria then take over, breaking down the plant matter and sucking the oxygen out of seawater. That leaves little or none for fish and other marine life.
Robert Diaz, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and other scientists have identified hundreds of these around the world, choking the life out of harbors, bays and estuaries.
Writing up a report to Congress last September, Diaz found that nearly half of U.S. bays, estuaries and other waterways surveyed have suffered from low-oxygen dead zones. These episodes do not necessarily happen ever year. They strike when the conditions are just right.
The episode in King Harbor follows unusually heavy rainfall in Southern California, which washed lawn fertilizer, dog droppings and similar nutrients into coastal waters. Algae have begun to bloom along the coast as the days grow longer, providing needed sunlight. Recent winds have further enriched waters by stirring up nutrients that these tiny plants need from deeper waters.
Scientists believe such dead zones will increase as ocean waters continue a warming trend in a changing climate. Warmer waters prompt faster biological growth, just like molds and bacteria will more quickly devour food left out of the refrigerator.
Some scientists, such as Jeremy Jackson at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, have suggested the oceans are reverting back to primeval seas of millions of years ago, when algae, bacteria and jellyfish ruled the oceans. He playfully dubs this the “rise of slime.”
--Tony Barboza and Kenneth R. Weiss

Just saw a great writeup on it on MSN.Its is a mass of anchovie,sardines and mackrel.Suspected cause of death is Oxygen depravation caused by too many fish in an oxygen poor environment.

The fish looked too big to be anchovies in the earlier pictures.

Turns out in this closeup you can see that they are actually mostly sardines....

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6...befe970c-640wi

This is really kind of a weird one. I used to live there and I have seen fishkills in the harbor before, but usually in the summer when the water is much warmer. They had a big one in 2005 but it was in July.

The Authorities are saying it was oxygen depletion, but in the ocean that is usually associated with warm water and red tide, in this case the water is cool, and I haven't heard anything about red tide at Redondo and the water in the video looks clear of red tide.

Basin 1 and 2 are the furthest from the inlet and they have the largest storm drains feeding into them. Lots of chemicals can deplete water of oxygen.


It's interesting to note that it's mostly dead baitfish. That basin has a lot of spotties in it and other fish even halibut. Unlike dines they know the harbor well enough to swim out to get away from bad stuff in the water. Dines because the school up and swim together are more likely to get caught in a situation where something comes down the drain and then pollutes the water.

If you look at the pics and vids...

<iframe title="YouTube video player" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VLThB-3kF7s" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" width="640"></iframe>

...you can clearly see that all the fish are bunched up on one side of the basin. From the pics it looks like those fish died on the south side of the basin right in front of the storm drains on the north side. If I had to guess something came down the storm drain that depleted the oxygen in the water, the dines tried to escape and were pushed to the south side of the basin by the contaminate or the oxygen depletion it caused, and whatever it was it overwhelmed them and eventually killed the dines there.

I've seen dines in there so thick you could practically walk on them and they did not die of oxygen depletion. The amount of bait the pictures show could not of used up all that oxygen on their own, it's actually a pretty normal amount of bait for that area. I'd say maybe some pool chemicals, lawn care stuff or something to do with maintaining the power plant that is right across the street, got into the water and killed the fish.

Just my take though.

I'll tell you guys one thing. I used to live on my boat in that harbor, and when it comes to politics and the City of Redondo Beach: business interests, and tourism always come first. If it came from the power plant or anyone else that might get in trouble, or if it might hurt the their tourism base the City would have no problem covering it up or pretending it's a natural phenomena rather than admit to a industrial accident or bad water discharge.

Jim

Just like the Salton Sea...Brown Alge good...Green Alge bad....

Where's Sonny Bono when we need him....:notworthy:

It's gunna smell like the Salton Sea on a nice 90+ degree day:D

I totally agree with you Jim, this is unnatural proof that KH is being treated poorly. Its too bad... I can only imagine what SM bay would be like if even half the people inland were more responsible with their trash and waste materials.

That is kinda far from a normal oxygen level, and it's not the kind of thing you would usually see in there just because there is a lot of bait in the water.

Lot's of Chemicals can pull oxygen out of the water, I would say a oxygen level that is so depleted that it's at "almost zero" bis far from normal and more likely to be caused by something unnatural or chemical or at least more abnormal then just a lot of bait in the water.

I mean if twenty people locked themselves in their garage with a running car the carbon monoxide could pull the oxygen levels in the garage down to "almost zero" but that would not mean they died a natural death, or that they died because the garage was too crowded, or that they would of died with or without the car running.

The deal is basin 1 and 2 are not even closed in like a garage. The opening to the main harbor must be a hundred feet wide and ten feet deep, and there are several circulation pipes right in front of where the bait died that connect that basin to the next one over.

Big tides, strong surge, and the wind blew like hell last night, that basin should of got plenty circulation in the last 24 hours. I'm just trying to point out that it's highly unlikely that in a relatively open harbor that oxygen levels would drop that low unless there is some major influence like red tide or chemicals involved.

Jim

I hear you there. I hate fishing after rains because of all the junk in the water, just get tired of pulling all the stuff up.

Jim

They've determined such kills off the coast of Africa to have been caused by gas emissions from the seabed. Being that you guys are in a seismically active area, is there a chance that could have done it?

That's true, but the seabed is being disturbed (generally from seismac or volcanic activity) and creating a chemical reaction; I don't see that happening here, at this time.

I was down there this am. It was crazy. one side of the harbor, they were all dead. the other side all alive. They said there was no Oxygen. but all the other fish under the sardine's where swimming around just fine.

Wow...I've seen it at Salton Sea before, those pics are insane...

On a side note, I've found a solution, but I'm sure it will piss the phook out of Redondo...let's do a mass roundup of the seals in LJ, drop those bastages off, they will gorge themselves before the birds and the smell take over, and hope they never find their way home...just a thought...:sifone:

Im Down with this iv got the truck ;) you load them up tho

warm water...good...too much bait bad...:reel:

WOW

It must be the Urban Runoff, Outfall Pipes, and Excessive Coastal Development that was dumped from the mlpa.

Man -- that place is going to smell worse than Meg Caldwell's sweat pants.:p

:reel:I hear the Bonita fishing has picked up comensurately

any chance the the earthquake in japan killed the bait fish in harbors beach because of the plates releasing chemicals?

pressure being release from seismic activity?

Well, official word is now in, the cause was a very strong neurotoxin.

Who could of seen that coming!!!

I figured the official story was bullshit from the start, and though I thought it was probably chemical, Domoic acid was on my list.

For those that do not know Domoic Acid ia the neurotoxin that causes amnesic shellfish poisoning. It Bioaccumilates so it builds up in the tissue of small fish like anchovies and sardines and then is absorbed and bioaccumlates in anything that eats them. When ingested by humans it acts as a neurotoxin causing memory loss, brain damage or even death.

Basically anything that has been feeding on those sardines is now suspect and potentially dangerous to eat. That goes for Lobsters as well as fish so I would not eat anything that comes from Redondo harbor for a while. I'd also suggest to guys that took sardines home for hoop bait etc.. that they throw that stuff in the trash. You don't want to hoop with bait that is contaminated with a neurotoxin. Demoic acid is serious shit, it kills fish eating mammals every year, do not mess around with it.

Don't be surprised if the City of Redondo plays this down, sticks to the original overcrowding story or basically acts like this is no big deal. Like I said earlier I used to live on my boat in that harbor, and when it comes to politics and the City of Redondo Beach: business interests, and tourism always come first. If it could negatively hurt the city, or cut into their tourism base the City would have no problem covering it up or pretending it's not dangerous or no big deal.

Jim

MORE DEAD SARDINE
 

I don't know about you guys but from now on, if i hear of more dead sardines I am going to connect this event with early signs of A MEGA QUAKE!!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110312/...ico_fish_surge


More dead Sardines in ACAPULCO!!!!!!!!!!!


I will assume there is a fault line by Redondo Canyon which caused plankton in a toxic algea bloom to manifest and the small bait fish ate it and died.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110312/...ico_fish_surge

USC scientists think they ate toxic algae before entering the harbor.
 

<table class="Bs nH iY" cellpadding="0"></table>A friend who goes to SIO forwarded me this email from David Caron at USC.