Natural causes cited in Eagle Lake fish kill
Convection
http://www.thelandmark.com/story.php3?story=5621
Volume XXVIII Issue 24
June 19, 2003
Updated (6/19/03)
Natural causes cited in Eagle Lake fish kill
by Ria Megnin
Holden – As dragonflies hummed and passing geese sent ripples over the lily
pads of Eagle Lake, the remains of about two hundred kiver fish floated
belly up in its waters this month.
Last week, about two dozen had washed up in the shallows of the town beach.
Most of their heads were missing or damaged by scavengers.
"I got a call from a resident on Monday [June 9]," Holden Health Agent
Brianna Kopp said. "This is one of the houses right on the lake. She went
down and said she saw hundreds of dead fish."
Kivers, officially known as "pumpkinseed" fish or Lepomis gibbosus, are
sunfish native to Massachusetts. They inhabit quiet, weedy, still waters and
are usually about five inches long. According to the Assabet River
Watershed’s Stream Watch web site, kivers have "intermediate tolerance" to
pollution. But officials don’t think humans or manmade material were
involved in the Eagle Lake deaths.
"Back when I was working in Auburn, they had a major fish kill and everybody
was like, ‘what are they doing to the water?’" Public Works Director Larry
Galkowski said. "They get nervous that someone’s polluting. But it’s
nothing. These things happen."
Kopp immediately contacted the Massachusetts Department of Environmental
Protection, which sent the report to the Department of Fisheries and
Wildlife.
‘Classic spawning kill’
"We’ve gotten a lot of these calls lately," Fish Kill Coordinator Richard
Hartley of Massachusetts Fisheries and Wildlife said Monday. His division is
responsible for handling events like the one at Eagle Lake. "Somebody
notices dead fish in a water body — anything from a couple of bluegills to
thousands and thousands of fish from many species. We screen the call to
determine if it’s a natural event or if it requires an investigation."
Hartley said fish kills often occur during the late spring and early summer.
"They’re generally spawning-related," he said. "It’s a very stressful time.
The fish are in shallower water that’s warming up and generating bacteria.
It’s like a cold going through a large school of fish, and there’s always a
certain percentage that’s going to die from it."
Making matters worse this year, Hartley said, is the severe winter from
which Massachusetts water bodies are emerging. Months of ice blocked air
from circulating with the water, while heavy snow prevented underwater
plants from receiving the sunlight needed for photosynthesis. As oxygen
levels dropped, fish populations were more at risk. "It can get to the point
where that can directly kill fish," Hartley said. "So the winter caused a
stressful situation to begin with, then when the fish begin spawning they
were still stressed. Now what’s happening really seems to be the classic
spawning kill."
Hartley said the other factor indicating a "natural kill" at Eagle Lake is
that the dead fish are all from the same species.
"In the case of Eagle Lake, they said it’s like 200 sunfish. That’s classic.
That’s a bacterial load or something that wipes out a whole bunch from one
species," Hartley said. "[Manmade] pollution generally affects all the
species in the pond. If there’s no sign of any obvious pollution — colored
water, heavy silt, a spill, a sheen on the water — and it’s just one
predominant species, then we chalk it up as a natural kill, and essentially
that’s the end of it."
Cleaning up
Hartley says the deaths could continue through mid-summer, until the
spawning season is done and fish begin to disperse throughout the lake.
Meanwhile, other types of sunfish could pick up the same virus. The kill
isn’t likely to spread to other bodies of water, however. Hartley said
spawning-season fish kills are generally limited to shallow, warm-water
ponds and lakes, and Eagle Lake feeds the deeper, colder Quinapoxet
Reservoir.
Cleaning up the remains is now Holden’s challenge. "We have no official
mechanism for that," Hartley said. "That’s where Mother Nature comes in.
There are a lot of scavengers that are going to be very happy: snapping
turtles, wading birds, raccoons. It can get a little odiferous, but
otherwise there’s no impact on humans. Over time, these things tend to take
care of themselves."
Holden’s staff doesn’t plan to wait. As the new pool faces
construction-related delays, Eagle Lake’s beach will temporarily be the
town’s only official swimming site.
"I have my lifeguards ready to go out sometime this week to assess the
situation," Recreation Director Denise Morano said. "We’ll get the DPW crew
out there and rake up the beach. Then it’s maintain [the beach] on an
as-needed basis. The lifeguards are there every day, they pick up the
trash."
"We’ll do what we have to, to clean it up," Galkowski said.
The question now is: will this kind of mass fish death happen again?
"We track these [fish kills] over time, and enter it into a database that
goes back to 1960," Hartley said. "There are some water bodies where it
happens almost annually. I don’t think that’s the case with Eagle Lake."
To report a fish kill in an area water body, call the state’s 24-hour
hotline at 1-800-632-8075.
Ian St. John
"Convection" <Conve...@convection.org> wrote in message
news:LEuIa.267496$Vi5.7...@news1.calgary.shaw.ca...
> From:
> http://www.thelandmark.com/story.php3?story=5621
>
> Volume XXVIII Issue 24
> June 19, 2003
> Updated (6/19/03)
>
> Natural causes cited in Eagle Lake fish kill
Natural causes are always responsible. Even if we make a deliberate attempt
at destruction, WE are part of nature.