Hundreds of small fish have are washing up dead on the Bayonne shore of the Newark Bay, and environmental officials say there’s not much anyone can do about it.
There are a number of reasons for the die-off, officials say, but these Atlantic Menhaden, or bunker fisher, are unwittingly killing themselves, Hackensack Riverkeeper Bill Sheehan says.
“The bunker fish ‘school up’ to get out of river and to the open waters,” Sheehan said. “When they get attacked by predators they go into a panic. They ball up and start swimming in circles and the faster they swim, the more oxygen they use — and if there is a low oxygen level, they will eventually suffocate.”
The dead fish have been reported to Bayonne officials from the Boatworks downtown all the way to Rutkowski Park uptown, Bayonne Office of Emergency Management Junior Ferrante said. The state Department of Environmental Protection has been notified and is investigating, he added.
Sheehan said a die-off of bunker fish, which are used primarily as bait, was recently reported at the Harmon Cove marina in Secaucus. He noted that these events are naturally occurring.
What makes this instance slightly out of the ordinary is that most die-offs occur during warm weather months, when things like an algae bloom helps to deplete oxygen from the water. Sheehan pointed out that the Hackensack River is warmer than usual this year because of a hotter summer and an unusually warm fall season so far.
“There’s no one to blame for these sort of instances,” he said. “You can blame Mother Nature.”
The riverkeeper said there is a silver lining to die-offs in the Hackensack River and Newark Bay, which remain contaminated with cadmium, lead, mercury, cancer-causing dioxin and PCBs from years of industrial polluting.
“The river is getting better and there wouldn’t be fish in the river to die if the river wasn’t getting better,” Sheehan said, noting that the Hackensack is home to more than 70 different marine species, up from six in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Link LonkNovember 21, 2020 at 02:14AM
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Here’s why fish are washing up dead on Bayonne shore of Newark Bay - NJ.com
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