{"id":36929,"date":"2014-05-26T17:08:34","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T22:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=36929"},"modified":"2014-05-30T11:58:35","modified_gmt":"2014-05-30T16:58:35","slug":"drought-possible-culprit-in-massive-fish-kill-on-gulf-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/05\/26\/drought-possible-culprit-in-massive-fish-kill-on-gulf-coast\/","title":{"rendered":"Drought Possible Culprit in Massive Fish Kill on Gulf Coast"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

Photo by Dave Einsel\/Getty Images<\/p>

A father and daughter play on the beach in Galveston in 2005. A red tide in Galveston Bay is causing dead fish to wash up on shore this week.<\/p><\/div>\n

Researchers suspect drought<\/a> is the cause of a massive fish die off in the Galveston Bay where millions of shad, also known as skipjack, have washed ashore there in recent days.\u00a0 They’ve been found primarily around the communities of Kemah and Seabrook.<\/p>\n

“We’ve never seen one to this scale in this location,” Texas Parks and Wildlif<\/a>e Biologist Heather Biggs told KUT’s Nathan Bernier. Though she said that it’s “very common to have fish kills within tributaries throughout the bay system due to low dissolved oxygen.”<\/p>\n

Biggs says the cause is apparently the drought. Researchers suspect a lack of rainwater runoff into Galveston Bay resulted in oxygen-depleted waters, which caused the fish to die.<\/p>\n

“When you have more runoff, you have more turbidity in the water, and you have more mixing in the water and so you have more oxygen,” Biggs said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“At this point, we feel like it is due to low dissolved oxygen in the water,” she said.<\/p>\n

Related<\/h4>
Posts<\/h5>