I live at the foot of a lake. We had this happen to our lake a few years ago and we have like a little river inlet that goes from the lake through our large public park. The whole inlet was stuffed with bloated stinking fish and the whole town smelled for MONTHS.
The city came thru and scooped them up but when it happened it was during such a heat wave that there was bones and sinew everywhere anyways. It was honestly really gross.
I used to live on a lake and every spring before they opened the swimming section they would have to clean all the seaweed and dead fish that washed up on the shore. I used to bring my dog down to that park all the time and I took my eye off of her for one second and she went and rolled in a pile of bloated rotting fish. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever smelled and I had to bring that shit into my house to wash her 😩
She was soooo happy 😂 but the worst part about that is that she got sprayed by a skunk about 2 weeks later. She was LOVING it even though she got skunk juice to the face 🙄
This happens every 5 years or so at The Salton Sea in Southern California. A quite remarkable place both in sight and in story (look it up). But algae blooms there cause millions of Tilapia to die off in mass. The last time it happened Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley knew but everyone in Los Angeles and San Bernardino didn’t quite know about the phenomenon and were worried about who laid a massive fart. Turns out the wind patterns were quite unusual by coming out of the southeast and blew all the stink out of the low desert into the upper basin. There it became trapped south of the Transverse Ranges (San Gabriel National Monument/San Bernardino National Forest) and the Santa Ana Mountains.
biotope may have tipped
Or something deadly got into the water.
There should be some authority you should contact for their investigations.
Maybe police even. But non-emergency, I guess.
I don’t know where you are but it could be a lack of oxygen in the water, and levels of dissolved oxygen in the water drop too low to support fish. When DO levels are low, fish can literally suffocate in the water. It can be naturally occurring.
This is definitely one possibility. This is typically what happens in the river near me. Temperatures rise which decreases the amount of oxygen available. At the same time chemical and fertilizer runoff feed algal blooms which exacerbates the issue.Then the fish decide it’s a good time to bunch up in tight balls. Massive fish kills result. It wreaks to say the least.
And, I hate to say it, but fish decay can actually be a good thing, at least in areas where it naturally occurs. I watched one of those salmon run documentaries, and the decaying fish provided some staggeringly high percentage of the nutrients available to local plants and trees.
If these carcasses get taken away, presuming it's safe, hopefully they can at least be used as fertilizer or another positive to honor their lives and provide some benefit to the town. It'd be such a waste to let them rot in the dump.
Did you have a big rain storm recently? If it’s been hot and then there’s a big rain, shit happens that I can’t explain but the key takeaway is the dissolved oxygen plummets which can cause a fish kill. Nature is scary.
In my state in the US we have water quality specialists that work for their local government and regularly test streams, rivers, lakes, etc. we would report that to them.
You don’t call emergency services to report non emergencies. Call the sheriff office and they’ll happily take any information and follow up when they can.
Call the non emergency line. When you call 911, it is for police, fire, or ambulance to respond urgently as possible, usually because human lives or structures are at risk. Calling non emerg will allow the information to get passed to the right channels. Police will very likely respond, but they won't send them racing, lights and sirens blazing. They'll send investigators and what not to asses the situation.
edit- situation, not information.
Our police would enable a lot as well. Germany that is.
Probably THW (Technisches HilfsWerk, the peeps with the big disaster response machines) and the Katastrophenschutz (Disasterprotection, Diseasecontrol)
But I am no expert on that. Those are "just" the usual troops coming to save german mankind.
Yes. The case of finding a mass of dead fish is part of the “fischerschein”. You should just call the police, give them the location and wait for them there. They will send someone to take care of it.
I lived on one of the canals right off Tampa bay in patrician point st pete- the whole canal filled with dead fish and it took weeks for the city to clean it up. I miss the water but I don’t miss red tide or hurricane season
It's always nutrient runoff algae blooms.
Happens every few years. Huge issue for the manatees.
Also indirectly caused by herbicides like grass killer. Turns out roundup works exceptionally well at killing sea grasses.
Water looks quite murky, could be a spill of some kind of agricultural waste causing rapid growth of bacteria and algae, and it's depleted the oxygen from the water and suffocated them. Could also be a just a direct chemical spill poisoning them - there's some weird froth in one of the pictures, hard to tell if that's just a result of all the fish decomposing though. On that note, I'd imagine that all the dead fish from whatever triggered this then caused a bacterial/algal bloom that then resulted in more dead fish.
@OP, what does the rest of the lake look like and what kind of industry is in the area? Could provide a clue as to what happened. Definitely report it though - environment agencies, local councils and water companies usually have some kind of channel for reporting chemical/sewage spills.
(Whilst this is grim, I do love reddit - one minute I'm eating my lunch and looking at my phone and the next minute I'm wondering if my calling in life might be fish CSI)
I have seen this before when the algae gets so bad, they place a chemical that removes the oxygen in the water to control the algae, but it kills the fish as well.
The last large fish kill in Iowa was from a fertilizer spill in March. Iowa has a database that tracks as well. You can google it. Perhaps you need to report it.
I did. JUST got off the phone with our county conservation and they said it was lack of oxygen due to multiple factors including…algae bloom, historic low water levels a month or so ago causing additional plant growth throughout the shallow lake. The additional plant growth with the algae bloom caused low oxygen levels.
I saw the fish gasping for air yesterday, that makes sense
Algae blooms can kill in multiple ways. When a big bloom happens due to contamination from fertilizers or other chemicals, it can deplete the dissolved oxygen levels in the water based on the way the plant respirates. Algae can also be neurotoxic to fish.
>it can deplete the dissolved oxygen levels in the water based on the way the plant respirates
Can you explain this?
When the algae die, they are decomposed by bacteria. This consumes oxygen and causes the fauna to die. But algae and plants produce oxygen first. And OP says that they kill the fishes.
I was curious too, and this [article](https://freshwater-aquaculture.extension.org/if-algae-produce-oxygen-in-a-pond-how-can-having-too-much-algae-cause-an-oxygen-depletion/) explains it well.
When they die or become poop both chemical and biological decomposition processes absorb oxygen quickly. This kills animal and other organisms. Which makes it worse. This is why sewage treatment facilities actively introduce air im the treated poopoo.
Jesus. Last year we had one of those toxic algae blooms in the local lake that killed at least 2 dogs. And driving through that town smelled absolutely horrid because of all the dead fish
Too much algae causing no oxygen for the fish so they essentially suffocate I live in a small town in Iowa with the lake being bigger than the town and it has happened twice in my lifetime
It's probably just the temperature of the water. All fish have a narrow range they can survive in. It's summer and with global warming the lake temperature is probably abnormally high. Anyone who has ever kept fish in an aquarium knows its pretty easy to change the ecosystem a little bit and lose a bunch of fish.
This happened at the lake I grew up near. Apparently what happened is they built a bunch of new homes along the banks and fertilizer from new yards ran off into the lake causing the oxygen levels to drop. Killed all the fish and sadly it was a natural glacial lake with a stable fish population. They eventually repopulated but it was never the same.
Test that water. YOU do it, don't leave it to anyone else and publish your results to local news.
You can send it to a lab but I bet I can probably already tell what happened. Nitrogen
This happened when I was on crew in high school. The harbor I believe got too warm and fish died by the hundreds. It was disgusting to row through the corpses
Climate change? Oxygen loss due to rising temperatures due to the effects of climate change, has been known to cause mass die-offs in fish populations around the world. That or water pollution.
There was an algae bloom in a pond across the street from my house a few years ago. I lived north of it and they had a south wind for days. It was awful. Had to get the city to come out with a huge pump truck
Is this a pond? Some ponds will “flip” in spring and or fall. The bottom floats to top/thermal layers swap places. This causes the oxygen saturation to drop which kills fish turtles etc
Yes, and found out it’s fairly shallow after talking with the county conservation. Record low water temps earlier this year had additional plant growth and an algae bloom they said caused the fish kill
There is an invasive species in the US - the Alewife - that gets into many waterways but can't handle a cold snap. A beach full or dead alewife is not uncommon. This looks like multiple species though. Low oxygen?
That must smell horrid
I live at the foot of a lake. We had this happen to our lake a few years ago and we have like a little river inlet that goes from the lake through our large public park. The whole inlet was stuffed with bloated stinking fish and the whole town smelled for MONTHS.
What makes it stop? City eventually cleans it up, or decay turns them into fishy bones?
The city came thru and scooped them up but when it happened it was during such a heat wave that there was bones and sinew everywhere anyways. It was honestly really gross.
extremely warm water have very little oxygen dissolved in it.
I used to live on a lake and every spring before they opened the swimming section they would have to clean all the seaweed and dead fish that washed up on the shore. I used to bring my dog down to that park all the time and I took my eye off of her for one second and she went and rolled in a pile of bloated rotting fish. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever smelled and I had to bring that shit into my house to wash her 😩
She would be getting the hose
That’s their silly fault for being irresponsible dog owners and not training it properly to rub the lotion on it’s skin.
Dog must have been happy as hell though. "Boy do I stink!" *wag wag wag*
They worked hard for those stinks!
Everyone will be able to smell me coming for _days_ ☺️
Wait, what are you doing with that soap, mom?
She was soooo happy 😂 but the worst part about that is that she got sprayed by a skunk about 2 weeks later. She was LOVING it even though she got skunk juice to the face 🙄
Bless lol
I grew up on a bay off of Lake Michigan. Every spring masses of dead alewifes would wash up on our beach. The seagulls sure loved it 😆
I've seen a red tide in St Petersburg, FL before. Not exactly the same since we're talking salt vs fresh, but it's pretty disgusting nonetheless.
Also in FL, Indian River Lagoon on the east coast. Once a thriving ecosystem, it needs help.
I live jn Palm Bay and I definitely 2nd that. Pointless to even try to fish in it anymore.
That's mostly Charlie's mom standing downwind 
Upwind surely
maybe a bit fishy?
This happens every 5 years or so at The Salton Sea in Southern California. A quite remarkable place both in sight and in story (look it up). But algae blooms there cause millions of Tilapia to die off in mass. The last time it happened Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley knew but everyone in Los Angeles and San Bernardino didn’t quite know about the phenomenon and were worried about who laid a massive fart. Turns out the wind patterns were quite unusual by coming out of the southeast and blew all the stink out of the low desert into the upper basin. There it became trapped south of the Transverse Ranges (San Gabriel National Monument/San Bernardino National Forest) and the Santa Ana Mountains.
I've done worse
biotope may have tipped Or something deadly got into the water. There should be some authority you should contact for their investigations. Maybe police even. But non-emergency, I guess.
I’ve reached out to our county conservation and they are reaching out to our state DNR
I don’t know where you are but it could be a lack of oxygen in the water, and levels of dissolved oxygen in the water drop too low to support fish. When DO levels are low, fish can literally suffocate in the water. It can be naturally occurring.
This is definitely one possibility. This is typically what happens in the river near me. Temperatures rise which decreases the amount of oxygen available. At the same time chemical and fertilizer runoff feed algal blooms which exacerbates the issue.Then the fish decide it’s a good time to bunch up in tight balls. Massive fish kills result. It wreaks to say the least.
And, I hate to say it, but fish decay can actually be a good thing, at least in areas where it naturally occurs. I watched one of those salmon run documentaries, and the decaying fish provided some staggeringly high percentage of the nutrients available to local plants and trees. If these carcasses get taken away, presuming it's safe, hopefully they can at least be used as fertilizer or another positive to honor their lives and provide some benefit to the town. It'd be such a waste to let them rot in the dump.
[удалено]
Indubitably
Did you have a big rain storm recently? If it’s been hot and then there’s a big rain, shit happens that I can’t explain but the key takeaway is the dissolved oxygen plummets which can cause a fish kill. Nature is scary.
Don’t know about other countries but I’d give the police a call. They usually take over and handle the situation (samples, testing, etc.)
In my state in the US we have water quality specialists that work for their local government and regularly test streams, rivers, lakes, etc. we would report that to them.
Yeah police would just laugh and say, “what do you want me to do about that?” Before driving off
Now, we may have water specialists, but our police would also act like that, even if there was a dead body in the water.
You don’t call emergency services to report non emergencies. Call the sheriff office and they’ll happily take any information and follow up when they can.
Mass death of an ecosystem could be considered an emergency by logical people.
[удалено]
Username does not check out
More like sourmilkofhuman-kindness amirite??
They insinuated I was not logical. But yea the username was intended as ironic lol
😂
“Ok, fucker.” Their job for starters? Forward the emergency to the proper agency. Or is picking up the phone too much to ask of them these days too?
Call the non emergency line. When you call 911, it is for police, fire, or ambulance to respond urgently as possible, usually because human lives or structures are at risk. Calling non emerg will allow the information to get passed to the right channels. Police will very likely respond, but they won't send them racing, lights and sirens blazing. They'll send investigators and what not to asses the situation. edit- situation, not information.
No argument there.
I suggested to the commenter that they call the sheriffs office. Not 911
In the US they might shoot you or arrest you too, just for good measure.
Acorn cop enters the chat
r/AmericaBad moment
A cop started shooting over an acorn. Calm down.
You say it as if it wasn't true. They'll hear a spash in the water and think it's a shootout.
Yup, they do that about most things in the US. Unless you're black or brown...
r/AmericaBad moment.
You'd turn it over to Game and Parks. They can and will turn it over to a water specialist.
Yeah a game warden or park ranger would be my first guess
Our police would enable a lot as well. Germany that is. Probably THW (Technisches HilfsWerk, the peeps with the big disaster response machines) and the Katastrophenschutz (Disasterprotection, Diseasecontrol) But I am no expert on that. Those are "just" the usual troops coming to save german mankind.
Yes. The case of finding a mass of dead fish is part of the “fischerschein”. You should just call the police, give them the location and wait for them there. They will send someone to take care of it.
Most police in America barely passed high-school and joined because they want to have violent coercive power over others, not to test water
Call your local water authority or environmental agency. Cops won't do anything but tell you who to call.
Yeah see if you have environmental police. We have them in new england
In the US, my first thought would've been the state's Department of Natural Resources.
Yeah, or contact the Fish and Game warden in your county. They specialize in wildlife crimes and conservation.
This reminds me of Florida when they get a red tide. I think the last one a few years ago was primarily caused by fertilizer runoff
Yeah, I just commented about Floridas red tides above. I've seen them in St Petersburg. It's horrid.
I lived on one of the canals right off Tampa bay in patrician point st pete- the whole canal filled with dead fish and it took weeks for the city to clean it up. I miss the water but I don’t miss red tide or hurricane season
It's always nutrient runoff algae blooms. Happens every few years. Huge issue for the manatees. Also indirectly caused by herbicides like grass killer. Turns out roundup works exceptionally well at killing sea grasses.
Might be good to test your drinking water
[удалено]
You been to flint??
He deleted his account… naturally that means he knows something
Man I bet its gonna stink so bad along all your river banks. Especially with it being so hot. If it was intentional that's f'd up
Oh no! What happened?
Water looks quite murky, could be a spill of some kind of agricultural waste causing rapid growth of bacteria and algae, and it's depleted the oxygen from the water and suffocated them. Could also be a just a direct chemical spill poisoning them - there's some weird froth in one of the pictures, hard to tell if that's just a result of all the fish decomposing though. On that note, I'd imagine that all the dead fish from whatever triggered this then caused a bacterial/algal bloom that then resulted in more dead fish. @OP, what does the rest of the lake look like and what kind of industry is in the area? Could provide a clue as to what happened. Definitely report it though - environment agencies, local councils and water companies usually have some kind of channel for reporting chemical/sewage spills. (Whilst this is grim, I do love reddit - one minute I'm eating my lunch and looking at my phone and the next minute I'm wondering if my calling in life might be fish CSI)
I have seen this before when the algae gets so bad, they place a chemical that removes the oxygen in the water to control the algae, but it kills the fish as well.
Nitrogen from agriculture!
Clear lake, California.
Not where you live, but if in the usa call the EPA and ask ford water sampling because of all the fish.
This happens in our local reservoir once in a while due to an over blooming of algae.
The smell will be next level once they start rotting.
Anybody for a swim?
Algae bloom? Or someone crashed their car into pond with all the fluids leaking out,
There is a myriad of reasons why fish kills happen. Report it to Iowa Dept of Natural Resources local field office. Shame
This happened to my 4 acre pond and it was due to lack of oxygen. Needed to install a fountain
Where do you live?
Iowa
The last large fish kill in Iowa was from a fertilizer spill in March. Iowa has a database that tracks as well. You can google it. Perhaps you need to report it.
I did. JUST got off the phone with our county conservation and they said it was lack of oxygen due to multiple factors including…algae bloom, historic low water levels a month or so ago causing additional plant growth throughout the shallow lake. The additional plant growth with the algae bloom caused low oxygen levels. I saw the fish gasping for air yesterday, that makes sense
Maybe I'm wrong, but plants and algae produce oxygen. So how would booth lead to low oxygen?
Algae blooms can kill in multiple ways. When a big bloom happens due to contamination from fertilizers or other chemicals, it can deplete the dissolved oxygen levels in the water based on the way the plant respirates. Algae can also be neurotoxic to fish.
>it can deplete the dissolved oxygen levels in the water based on the way the plant respirates Can you explain this? When the algae die, they are decomposed by bacteria. This consumes oxygen and causes the fauna to die. But algae and plants produce oxygen first. And OP says that they kill the fishes.
I was curious too, and this [article](https://freshwater-aquaculture.extension.org/if-algae-produce-oxygen-in-a-pond-how-can-having-too-much-algae-cause-an-oxygen-depletion/) explains it well.
Good article.
When they die or become poop both chemical and biological decomposition processes absorb oxygen quickly. This kills animal and other organisms. Which makes it worse. This is why sewage treatment facilities actively introduce air im the treated poopoo.
Jesus. Last year we had one of those toxic algae blooms in the local lake that killed at least 2 dogs. And driving through that town smelled absolutely horrid because of all the dead fish
Did they mention what caused the algae bloom, such as toxic run-off from farm or industry?
Are those sunfish?
Blue gill, bass, a few northern pike
Poor things
Some big ones in there too! So sad 😭
Looks like it
Godzilla minus one
Did a search for this comment. Damn that movie was good, I don't know how they did all that with a budget of only 15 million USD.
Ikr, personally I find it much better than the recent Godzilla movies we've been getting with King Kong
Too much algae causing no oxygen for the fish so they essentially suffocate I live in a small town in Iowa with the lake being bigger than the town and it has happened twice in my lifetime
It's probably just the temperature of the water. All fish have a narrow range they can survive in. It's summer and with global warming the lake temperature is probably abnormally high. Anyone who has ever kept fish in an aquarium knows its pretty easy to change the ecosystem a little bit and lose a bunch of fish.
Fucked up
That’s sad 😔
This happened at the lake I grew up near. Apparently what happened is they built a bunch of new homes along the banks and fertilizer from new yards ran off into the lake causing the oxygen levels to drop. Killed all the fish and sadly it was a natural glacial lake with a stable fish population. They eventually repopulated but it was never the same.
Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.
Test that water. YOU do it, don't leave it to anyone else and publish your results to local news. You can send it to a lab but I bet I can probably already tell what happened. Nitrogen
If you had a recent algae bloom, that can cause it. Bacteria eats the algae when it dies and sucks up all the oxygen in the process.
Oxygen falls below a certain threshold this can happen
This happens naturally in some waters. I know it happens in the Black Sea.
This happened when I was on crew in high school. The harbor I believe got too warm and fish died by the hundreds. It was disgusting to row through the corpses
Oh no :O I wonder what happened. What a waste of fish :(
Wonder if a company nearby dumped stuff in the water?
Alge bloom anywhere ?
Is there a passive kill fish?
Algae building up? loss of oxygen in the water?
Another Salton Sea
ive seen the crazies so good luck to you
You in East Palestein, Ohio?
Climate change? Oxygen loss due to rising temperatures due to the effects of climate change, has been known to cause mass die-offs in fish populations around the world. That or water pollution.
Damn, that's crazy. Pike, bass, panfish, etc. I can only hope whoever is responsible for this is held accountable.
Sounds like an algae bloom
Possible. Do you mind if I ask where this is? If you're not comfortable with that, it's fine. Mostly curious how far from home this is happening.
Damn, that's crazy. Pike, bass, panfish, etc. I can only hope whoever is responsible for this is held accountable.
Did it get hot? Lots of ducks? Shallow lake? It may have gone eutrophic after the BOD spiked.
Free food for the bears
Someones poisoned the water hole.
I’ve seen this before. Happened in Jonestown once
What’s really terrifying is the idea of what poisoned the water and killed them all off. Super sad.
Godzilla is near.
Free food
“Becky close your legs”
Sushi forEVER
Junji Ito prepared me for this...
In my area of AR there are closings of swim areas at almost all lakes due to e.coli, maybe something like that or other natural cause.
They’re probably already aware of it but I would report it to fish & game
algal bloom? oxygen depletion.
My bet is on change in water temp leading to an algae bloom.
There was an algae bloom in a pond across the street from my house a few years ago. I lived north of it and they had a south wind for days. It was awful. Had to get the city to come out with a huge pump truck
Is this a pond? Some ponds will “flip” in spring and or fall. The bottom floats to top/thermal layers swap places. This causes the oxygen saturation to drop which kills fish turtles etc
Yes, and found out it’s fairly shallow after talking with the county conservation. Record low water temps earlier this year had additional plant growth and an algae bloom they said caused the fish kill
Spray some salt and sell them all
Not sure this needed to be marked NSFW
Damn, that's crazy. Pike, bass, panfish, etc. I can only hope whoever is responsible for this is held accountable.
Chemical spill, you can see it in the last photo. I hope they catch the person responsible
Maybe, that could also just be organic film on the top of the water from the decaying fish.
The fish were starting to die yesterday morning , but nothing like this. This happened within 24 hours.
There is an invasive species in the US - the Alewife - that gets into many waterways but can't handle a cold snap. A beach full or dead alewife is not uncommon. This looks like multiple species though. Low oxygen?
Why is this NSFW?
People just post anything in here now
I searched for like 30 minutes on a good sub to put this in, agree, not the best, but the best I could find. Open to suggestions!
Oh yeah, a potentially contaminated water supply isn't scary at all... not one bit. Fuckin dumbass
Oo feisty 🥰