Dead fish have been washing up along a 60-mile stretch of the Hudson River, reaching as far north as Putnam County — and advocates fear they are suffocating to death following a similar mass fish fatality over the summer.
Carcasses of Atlantic menhaden, a type of herring known as bunker fish, have been spotted from the New York Harbor to Mystery Point in Garrison, according to clean water advocate group Riverkeeper.
Last week, Riverkeeper said it had received numerous reports of dead and dying bunker up and down the Hudson and out east in the North Fork of Long Island over a span of two weeks.
“Observers took videos of fish gasping for air while swimming in circles and dying in the waters off the Upper West Side of Manhattan and Horan’s Landing in Sleepy Hollow,” the group wrote on its blog.
On its Instagram, Riverkeeper posted photos of the tragic water dwellers from Irvington, Piermont, Secaucus and Sleepy Hollow.
Hundreds of dead bunkers have also popped up along Newark Bay, according to the Hudson Reporter.
Bayonne public information officer Joe Ryan told the publication that the mass die-off is usually due to a lack of oxygen in the water — a climate change-linked problem that caused hundreds of fish to suffocate in July.
An increase in sewage seeping into the water, exascerbated by hotter summer weather, can cause oxygen levels to plummet.
“One of the biggest problems we face is combined sewer overflows leaking raw and partially treated sewage into our bays, causing algae blooms and oxygen levels to drop,” Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, told the Hudson Reporter.
“What makes it even worse is warmer water and more rain.”
The most recent die-off has been seen on shorelines in Red Hook, the West Side, Piermont Pier, Tarrytown, Ossining and Cortlandt, Riverkeeper said.
Dead fish have also turned up on the shores of Englewood Cliffs in New Jersey.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Bureau of Fisheries collected about a dozen dying fish for necropsies in hopes of determining the cause of the mass causality.
The agency didn’t immediately return a message from The Post.
The Link LonkDecember 09, 2020 at 03:12AM
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More dead fish are washing up along the Hudson River - New York Post
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