Millions of Dead Fish in Redondo

[Fiskadoro]

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....



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...



...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