Louisiana - Huge fish kill reported in Plaquemines Parish

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Dead whale and thousands of dead fish found near Venice shipping canal

by WWLTV.com
wwltv.com
Posted on September 13, 2010 at 9:41 PM
Updated today at 9:45 PM

VENICE, La. – Thousands of fish and a dead whale on Monday were found dead at the mouth of a shipping channel in Venice.

Species include crabs, sting rays, eels, drum, speckled trout and red fish.
Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, who sent in the pictures above, said there is no testing going on to determine if it's from the oil spill, although the northern Gulf of Mexico has suffered from a persistent dead zone of low oxygen, blamed on nutrient rich runoff from the Mississippi River.

Nungesser said this is different because usually the kills happen to only one or two species of fish...

http://www.wwltv.com/news/Dead-whal...und-near-Venice-shipping-canal-102828139.html

 

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Re: Louisiana - Dead whale and thousands of dead fish found near Venice shipping canal

Re: Louisiana - Dead whale and thousands of dead fish found near Venice shipping canal

Huge fish kill reported in Plaquemines Parish

Published: Monday, September 13, 2010, 3:42 PM Updated: Monday, September 13, 2010, 4:05 PM

A massive fish kill was reported late Friday in Plaquemines Parish at Bayou Chaland, west of the Mississippi River.

Plaquemines Parish governmentThis is a closeup of the fish kill at Bayou Chaland in Plaquemines Parish.

...The fish kill was reported to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries and the cause has not yet been determined, the parish said. The
fish were found in an area that has been impacted by the oil from the BP oil spill, the parish said.
...
Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said he has asked Wildlife & Fisheries for a quick determination of the cause. The parish has also requested testing by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"We can't continue to see these fish kills,'' Nungesser said in a news release. "We need some additional tests to find out why these fish are dying in large numbers. If it is low oxygen, we need to identify the cause."
...

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/huge_fish_kill_reported_in_pla.html

 

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Re: Louisiana - Dead whale and thousands of dead fish found near Venice shipping canal

Re: Louisiana - Dead whale and thousands of dead fish found near Venice shipping canal

LDWF: Oil unlikely as cause of fish kill

Sept. 17, 2010, 7:44 p.m. CDT
Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? The latest raft of bloated fish found in Plaquemines Parish probably died for the same reason as one found six days earlier ? low oxygen caused by high temperatures in shallow water, says Louisiana's top fisheries biologist.

Randy Pausina, assistant secretary for the Office of Fisheries in the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, said biologists went to check the fish kill at Bay Joe Wise on Friday, the day it was reported to his office.

He expected a report Monday, and expected it to show the same cause as a fish kill reported Sept. 10 in adjacent Bay Chaland.

"The hotter the water is, the less oxygen the water can hold," Pausina said. Heat also speeds up plant and animal metabolism, so they need more oxygen. Fish trapped in shallow water use up its oxygen and suffocate.

Pausina noted that both bays are connected to a web of canals dredged for oil and gas operations. The fish found Thursday may have died and sunk in those canals, then floated out to the bay during high tides after decomposition gases filled their bodies, he said.

Plaquemines Parish coastal zone director P.J. Hahn said Thursday that the fish covered at least one-fourth of a square mile, with oil visible among them. He said he wanted the area tested because it was affected by oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill.

The area is closed to fishing because of oil from the spill, but that doesn't mean oil killed the fish, Pausina said.

"Nobody's doubting there's oil in the marsh in those areas. That's why there's no harvest of fish in those areas," he said.

.../
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/index...of-fish-kill/43d30f46fb704ecaa6f1a6c78d867c93

 

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Louisiana - Third fish kill reported in Plaquemines

Louisiana - Third fish kill reported in Plaquemines

Third fish kill reported in Plaquemines

Photos: Third fish kill reported in Plaquemines

by Michael Luke / Eyewitness News
wwltv.com
Posted on September 18, 2010 at 1:24 PM
Updated yesterday at 1:27 PM

Officials in Plaquemines Parish are reporting a fish kill in Bayou Robinson ? the third such fish kill in the parish in recent days.

P. J. Hahn, director for the Coastal Zone Management Department, took photos of another large fish kill in the waters of Plaquemines Parish.

The previous fish kills were reported in Bay Chaland and Bay Joe Wise and were predominantly menhaden, also called pogie.

The Bay Chaland fish kill was discovered on Sept. 10 and the Bay Joe Wise fish kill was discovered by officials Thursday.

?Hahn said Thursday that the fish (in Bay Joe Wise) covered at least one-fourth of a square mile, with oil visible among them. He said he wanted the area tested because it was affected by oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill,? said a report from the Associated Press.

In addition to hundreds of thousands of dead fish floating west of the Mississippi River in Bayou Chaland, several days before, a large starfish kill was found in nearby Barataria Bay, and a dead baby whale was discovered near Venice a few days later.

.../

Full text and more photos:
http://www.wwltv.com/news/Third-fish-kill-reported-in-Plaquemines-103204929.html

 

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Re: Louisiana - Third fish kill reported in Plaquemines

Re: Louisiana - Third fish kill reported in Plaquemines

Despite final well kill, oil persists along coastal Louisiana

by Maya Rodriguez / Eyewitness News
wwltv.com
Posted on September 19, 2010 at 4:48 PM
Updated yesterday at 5:05 PM

Excerpt:

Lately, what is keeping the parish on its collective toes are fish kills: at least four major ones, within the last two weeks.

"Millions of fish, absolutely, millions," said P.J. Hahn, the parish's Coastal Zone Management Director.

Hahn has been documenting the fish kills, including one in Bayou Robinson on Sunday.

"We're used to seeing fish kills out here at this time of year, but not at this number, mass number of fish that are dying, and not in the frequency that they are occurring now," he said.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said the fish kills are due to low oxygen -- and not related to the oil spill. However, parish leaders remain unconvinced. On Sunday, representatives of the district attorney's office in Plaquemines, went out to one of the fish kill areas. They collected samples, which could end up being used in civil penalties case related to the oil spill.

"We're just building our case," said Christina Cossich DeYoung, a private attorney whose firm is assisting the district attorney's office. "We're coming to take samples of the fish, to take scrape the fish, to see if there is any oil in the fish."

.../
http://www.wwltv.com/news/gulf-oil-...sists-Along-Coastal-Louisiana--103245774.html

 

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Re: Louisiana - Third fish kill reported in Plaquemines

Re: Louisiana - Third fish kill reported in Plaquemines

State officials to test latest fish kill

by Maya Rodriguez / Eyewitness News
wwltv.com
Posted on September 21, 2010 at 6:20 PM
Updated yesterday at 6:39 PM




The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is the responding agency for fish kills. They sent biologists out to the sites and blamed the kills on low oxygen levels in the water -- a conclusion they reached without doing a single test on the dead fish.
...

No further testing was done, Pausina said, because the teams dispatched to the fish kills didn't see any oil related pollution.

"These people are trained. This is what they do. They spend their whole careers doing that. We train them. There?s a full fish kill protocol,? Pausina said. ?In light of the Deepwater Horizon event, they?ve also received additional training, sensory training where they can smell the fish, and there?s different techniques that the FDA has come down and taught our people that all would be indicators that would say, hey, something is not right here, we?ve never seen this before, let's take it to the next level.

And so far in these kills, we haven't seen that.?

Yet Pausina said the agency recognizes that the fish kills present a perception problem, especially for those trying to get the message out that Gulf seafood is safe to eat.

"Odd things are going on nowadays and people are at a higher level of alert, so they?re noticing and picking up on things they would have overlooked. I feel extremely confident that the state is going well above and beyond the call of duty,? Pausina said.

Within 30 minutes of our interview, a spokesperson for Wildlife and Fisheries contacted Eyewitness News, saying they would now in fact be testing the fish from the fish kill in Bayou Robinson.


Full text and video:
http://www.wwltv.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/State-officials-to-test-latest-fish-kill-for-oil-103484999.html

 

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Re: Louisiana - Huge fish kill reported in Plaquemines Parish

Officials unable to perform necropsy on Plaquemines fish kill



by WWLTV.com
wwltv.com
Posted on September 29, 2010 at 11:12 AM

NEW ORLEANS ? The cause of recent fish kills in the waters of Louisiana is due to low levels of oxygen after tests were conducted on the water, since a necropsy couldn't be performed on the fish, according to officials from Wildlife and Fisheries.

?Although we tried, we were unable to secure viable samples for necropsy from the most recent fish kill,? said an e-mail from Olivia Watkins, a spokesperson from Wildlife and Fisheries.
...

?In fact, in all of the fish kills we have seen in the last month, the fish were several days old by the time we were notified,? said Watkins.

?As the bodies decompose, they can become contaminated with other environmental factors. Their bodies also start to produce an oil of their own as they sit in the heat ? menhaden are a fish actually commonly used to produce the kinds of fish oils that are used to make things like vitamins.?


Full text:
http://www.wwltv.com/news/Officials.html

 

[Emily]

Re: Louisiana - Huge fish kill reported in Plaquemines Parish

This is a video about fishermen and buyers who suspected from smell and viability that a harvest was contaminated, and getting a non-response when they asked for someone from the government to come and collect samples for testing. (Like they are supposed to do when seafood fails the 'sniff test.')

One of the buyers says he does not want to hurt anybody and tears up at the end of the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhUS_5FwNzw