BajaNomad

what the heck? Dead fish litter our beaches!!!

shari - 7-18-2011 at 07:30 PM

Yesterday after waving goodbye to the Flying Doctors, Juan, me and the mutts headed out to fish for halibut at el Rincon. The water was too murky with currents churning things up there so we just hung out, played with the dogs and relaxed. On my beach run, I was dismayed to find the beach littered with dead critters....tons of fish called Rana here, some eels, stingrays, guitar fish, billions of crabs all dead or dying in the tide line.



There was a sealion acting very strange too...the dogs kept him from beaching I think but he looked weak and discombubullated...er confused.


Then we saw this guy in distress too and he washed up on the beach...any ideas what it is? Juan thinks the fish that died are deep water species....the water was very very cold yesterday too.




hey Blanca...are you seeing anything like this up your way? Miles and miles of beach are covered with dead fish.




[Edited on 7-19-2011 by shari]

woody with a view - 7-18-2011 at 07:35 PM

must be a massive upwelling of cold water. it looks like there is no red tide, right?

mulegemichael - 7-18-2011 at 07:54 PM

si...looks like deepwater upwheling...is that how you spell it, your majesty?...doesn't look right?...two "l"s.???

Ken Bondy - 7-18-2011 at 08:01 PM

Definitely deep water species sis. That last one looks like a coelacanth. Very strange.

This image show the cold water

vgabndo - 7-18-2011 at 08:03 PM

In this NOAA image from last week, there is a bubble of extra cold water off your shores.



http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/images/gcal/GCal_GoesSST.gi...

shari - 7-18-2011 at 08:06 PM

yesterday the water temps took a real dive!!! we'd never seen these species before...weird man

Woooosh - 7-18-2011 at 08:08 PM

very cold water up north here too.

Frank - 7-18-2011 at 08:09 PM

My guess on the top one..

Roughbar frogfish http://www.mexfish.com/fish/rjfrog/rjfrog.htm

Ken Bondy - 7-18-2011 at 08:33 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Frank
My guess on the top one..

Roughbar frogfish http://www.mexfish.com/fish/rjfrog/rjfrog.htm


I think you've got it. Definitely a frogfish, I think you can actually see the lure.

shari - 7-18-2011 at 08:44 PM

yup....we have a winner on the frogfish...cool lure eh!...so what is that snakey looking thing above it and the other big weird fish isnt a coelacanth as it doesnt have those "legs".....what the heck is that thing.

Frank - 7-18-2011 at 08:49 PM

I knew I had seen that last one before on here...

http://forums.bajanomad.com/viewthread.php?tid=53234

http://www.mexfish.com/fish/pacbb/pacbb.htm

Now you have living fossils washing up on the beach

ElCap - 7-18-2011 at 08:50 PM

Looks kinda like a red brotula - they have a tapered tail fin like that. But I think it's something else. Those are definitely some deepwater fish though.

shari - 7-18-2011 at 09:12 PM

I knew I could count on you nomads to come through on an ID...bravo Frank! Nobody wanted to eat it cause no one knew what it was...or why it beached. It was alive when it washed ashore....Juan left it out for the coyotes...geezo...maybe we should have it mounted

Skipjack Joe - 7-18-2011 at 10:36 PM

They're trying to escape the unfavorable conditions down deep. Anoxia or hypoxia caused by severe upwelling is what I came up with while searching the net.

It will be interesting to see if this is followed by a period of red tides like you had about 3 or 4 years ago.

motoged - 7-18-2011 at 10:45 PM

A few weeks ago there was a thread about some fish dead on the beach somewhere on the SoC side....some suggested the fish died from sand being stirred up and fish suffocating with clogged gills....I dunno....but....


Armageddon?

zoesterone - 7-19-2011 at 06:42 AM

Over on this side, a bit north of Mazatlan, a few months ago we visited a beach that was almost solid moray eels littering the sand. No fish, but more eels than one could count. The owner of a small resort nearby said she had never seen that before. Morays are not lovely looking creatures, but nonetheless, hated to see so many dead and dying. Maybe the same phenomenon? The best I could come up with after research, was an abnormal kind of tide.

shari - 7-19-2011 at 06:51 AM

thanks everyone for your theories....the frog fish did have swollen tongues. There were several species dead including some pargo, baby rock fish too. We did have a large swell a few days ago, but nothing out of the ordinary for here...that large cold water bubble is odd indeed and may have caused it??? sure would like to know the answer.

Martyman - 7-19-2011 at 08:13 AM

Maybe that second one is a knifefish?

Osprey - 7-19-2011 at 08:37 AM

My fish of the Pacific book says the second fish might be a c-ckscomb.

Belay that, google says max length is 20 CM

[Edited on 7-19-2011 by Osprey]

TheColoradoDude - 7-19-2011 at 08:59 AM

http://www.thejump.net/id/pacific-bearded-brotula.htm

That is a pacific bearded brotula.

55steve - 7-19-2011 at 08:40 PM

It's a member of the cusk eel family - seems there are 240 different models throughout the world so an exact ID is difficult.

Here is a link to some info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cusk-eel

My friend is a fish wholesaler and markets a cusk eel sold as kingclip - it's delicious!

[Edited on 7-20-2011 by 55steve]

Skipjack Joe - 7-20-2011 at 08:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by oladulce
Shari mentioned their freezing ocean conditions and it's the same here even farther South on the Pacific side of central Baja Sur. After several days of muy feo winds last week the water temp plummeted from the mid 70's to it's current 59°- 60°.


Sounds as though strong upwelling currents brought all those deep sea critters up.

classicbajabronco - 7-20-2011 at 08:35 AM

We still have dead fish carcasses littering the eastcape beaches.

It's hard to keep the dogs out of them, every 5-10 feet they find another fish. Lots of dead Morey Eels.

shari - 7-20-2011 at 01:03 PM

Juan thinks it may be a red tide even though the water is very cold...the visibility is poor and water is kinda murky red...it seems like a small current that is moving north...everyone is pretty worried about the abalone....tons of halibut being caught now off the beach by the way...the little pier is packed!!!

BajaBlanca - 7-20-2011 at 02:10 PM

wow... I haven't heard anything and haven't been to the beach in over a week or so, altho' we were at the launching area near the lagoon yesterday and I didn't see anything.

let me check it out and get back to you on this.

horrible .... really terrible ....

ILikeMex - 7-20-2011 at 02:27 PM

Upwelling of cold water from bottom of ocean to top would mean that the top warm water is going the opposite way and replacing the cold water below.
I wonder if this happens fast enough that the change of cold to warm/hat has caused these fish enough stress to kill them???

ILikeMex - 7-20-2011 at 02:50 PM

Dead zones are hypoxic (low-oxygen) areas in the world's oceans, the observed incidences of which have been increasing since oceanographers began noting them in the 1970s. These occur near inhabited coastlines, where aquatic life is most concentrated. (The vast middle portions of the oceans which naturally have little life are not considered "dead zones".) The term can also be applied to the identical phenomenon in large lakes.

Causes:
Aquatic and marine dead zones can be caused by an increase in chemical nutrients (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus) in the water, known as eutrophication. These chemicals are the fundamental building blocks of single-celled, plant-like organisms that live in the water column, and whose growth is limited in part by the availability of these materials. Eutrophication can lead to rapid increases in the density of certain types of these phytoplankton, a phenomenon known as an algal bloom. Although these algae produce oxygen in the daytime via photosynthesis, during the night hours they continue to undergo cellular respiration and can therefore deplete the water column of available oxygen.[citation needed] In addition, when algal blooms die off, oxygen is used up further during bacterial decomposition of the dead algal cells. Both of these processes can result in a significant depletion of dissolved oxygen in the water, creating hypoxic conditions. Dead zones can be caused by natural and by anthropogenic factors. Use of chemical fertilizers is considered the major human-related cause of dead zones around the world. Natural causes include coastal upwelling and changes in wind and water circulation patterns. Runoff from sewage, urban land use, and fertilizers can also contribute to eutrophication.Natural causes include coastal upwelling and changes in wind and water circulation patterns.

Skipjack Joe - 7-20-2011 at 04:11 PM

Upwelling always brings low oxygen water with rich nutrients to the surface. Usually that's a boon to marine life (as anyone can see at Asuncion) but under certain conditions it triggers blooms of dinoflagellates which further depletes the oxygen and makes it tough for the other critters.

Can't find the specifics of how things go bad. There must be some oxygen threshold that triggers the entire thing.

BajaBlanca - 7-20-2011 at 08:32 PM

dead fish on the beach here but not many .. one dead seal too
according to our guests who went walking on the beach this pm.

EdZeranski - 7-21-2011 at 10:16 PM

Call Art Bell...!~8^o

EdZ

shari - 7-22-2011 at 09:50 AM

hmmm...yesterday the ocean in san roque looked red and was very murky. Diving was called off today because of poor visibility (Juan is back on the rockpile!!)....so looks like Igor was correct and the cold water upwelling phenomenon caused some sort of algae bloom...but I dont think it's a red tide per se because no surface fish are dying. I did see a dead baby spotted seal on the beach yesterday but most likely unrelated...perhaps caught in a net....but holy mother of god the water is cold!!!