Many Fish Die

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32393, 4 September 1970, Page 13

Many Fish Die

(N.Z. Preu Aun.—Copyright) PENSACOLA (Florida), September 3. So many Menhaden fish died in Escambia Bay yesterday “that the water looks like snow,” a Florida Marine patrol officer said. “It’s big. It looks like snow on the water over there, but it doesn’t smell that way,” said Lieutenant Lewis Zangas. This was the thirty-first major fish kill reported in Escambia Bay this year, compared with the 21 kills for all of 1969, Lieutenant Zangas said. The fish apparently started dying on Tuesday night from deoxygenation of the water, he said.

Millions of fsh floated belly up in a 200-acre area just south of the inter-state highway 10 bridge over the Escambia River, Lieutenant Zangas said. Mr Nat Reed, Governor Claude Kirk’s conservation expert, said that the fish were killed by oxygen-burn-ing algae which thrives on carbons and nitrogen waste dumped into the bay by the industrial plants. “These vast discharges of phosphorus and nitrogen are as damaging to that bay and all the life in it as deadly mercury,” Mr Reed said, “because the algae kills the fish which then decay and In turn provide a catalyst for more algae to grow in the polluted water,” Mr Reed said.