ONE MILLION FISH TURN DEAD IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MARINA

A Los Angeles County lifeguard scoops up dead fish in the King Harbour area of Redondo Beach south of Los Angeles on Tuesday.

LOS ANGELES, U.S.A - An estimated one million fish turned up dead in a Southern California marina, creating a floating feast for pelicans, gulls and other sea life and a stinky mess for harbour authorities.
The sardines apparently depleted the water of oxygen and suffocated after getting lost in the marina, officials said. The die-off was unusual but not unprecedented.

• Boaters awakened to find a carpet of small silvery fish surrounding their vessels, said Staci Gabrielli, marine coordinator for King Harbor Marina on the Los Angeles County coast.
• Authorities said there was also a layer of up to 0.46 metres of dead fish on the bottom of the marina. The scale was impressive to locals at King Harbour, which shelters about 1,400 boats on south Santa Monica Bay.
• "The fishermen say they've never seen anything this bad that wasn't red tide," Hughan said, referring to the natural blooms of toxic algae that can kill fish. Brent Scheiwe, an official of Sea Lab, a Los Angeles Conservation Corps research program at Redondo, said testing of some of the water showed oxygen levels near zero.
• Hughan said water samples showed no oils or chemicals that could have contributed to the deaths. He said some of the fish were being shipped to a Fish and Game laboratory for study but the cause was likely to be uncomplicated.

The fish appeared to have come into the marina during the night and probably couldn't find their way out, he said. Hughan said there was no safety issue at all but "it's going to smell bad for quite a while."

Source: AP