Over the weekend, thousands of fish were found dead along the beach in Quintana in Brazoria County, about 100 kilometers south of Houston, Texas. According to Bryant Frazier, the director of the county parks department, the death was caused by a “perfect storm» of adverse conditions that reduced the oxygen levels in the water, causing the animals to suffocate.
Officials of the park where Quintana Beach is located said dead fish began washing ashore on Friday morning and were observed along a stretch of coastline nearly 10 kilometers long. In this area, similar fish kills had already been observed in the past, due to the increase in sea water temperatures during the summer. Patty Brinkmeyer, park executive, though he said a CNN that this is “by far” the largest amount of dead fish I have ever seen.
Brinkmeyer claims that the fish found dead could be “hundreds of thousands”.
Most were menhaden (Brevoortia the tyrant), a type of marine fish that lives mainly in various areas of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada. According to both Frazier and Quintana park managers, their deaths were due to oxygen deprivation, partly due to higher-than-normal water temperatures, and partly due to the calmer seas and cloudier skies in the world. usual.
Park authorities they explained on Facebook that as the temperature increases, the oxygen dissolved in the water decreases, and this is a problem especially in shallow waters, since they heat up more quickly. The impact of the wind that causes the waves facilitates the circulation of oxygen in the water, but the park has said that in the last three weeks the sea has been very calm; finally, the clouds limit the ability of algae and other organisms to produce oxygen through the process of photosynthesis, which takes place by exploiting sunlight.
Operations to remove dead fish from the beach began immediately, before the carcasses began to rot and cause problems. On Sunday morning there were only a few left: the beach should be open again on Monday.
Marine wildlife researcher Katie St. Clair at Texas A&M University told the New York Times that rising temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico linked to climate change may have contributed to fish deaths, which he says are likely to have a significant impact on the local ecosystem. St. Clair said increasingly warmer water temperatures could “certainly” cause an increase in the frequency of these events, especially in shallow waters.
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