August 23, 2012 — Don Baker was shocked at the sight around his 34-foot-long sailboat as he sailed along the western end of the Toms River on Thursday morning. “(Dead fish), each about three inches long, were all over section C of the lagoon area,” said the 80-year-old Matawan resident. “They were all floating in the water.”
The state Department of Environmental Protection noted a report of hundreds of dead Atlantic menhaden fish in a lagoon at the Lighthouse Point Marina at Crabbe Road and Route 166 in South Toms River, said state DEP spokesman Larry Hajna in an email.
Baker, who stores his sailboat at the marina, said he noticed roughly 30 seagulls sitting at the main entrance to the lagoon area who were not feeding on the fish around 11 a.m. Thursday.
“That led me to believe either they had their fill of fish or they detected something wrong with them and so (they) would not eat them,” Baker said.
However, the state DEP’s Division of Fish and Wildlife investigated the incident with the Ocean County Health Department and found no obvious sources of pollution or contamination, according to the state DEP’s website.
Baker said he first noticed strange behavior by the fish in the river Wednesday evening.
“Yesterday, when I came back in at 5 p.m., the fish were all flopping out of the water,” Baker said. “I assumed they were being chased by a big fish.”
However, there is nothing unusual about the incident, according to the state DEP.
Menhaden travel in large schools that can number in the millions and may live as long as 12 years with a maximum length of 20 inches and weight of three pounds, according to a profile found on the state DEP’s website.
It is not uncommon for very large schools of juvenile (menhaden) to run up into shallow lagoons, which then use up all of the oxygen in the lagoon that results in a fish kill, according to the state DEP’s website.
Several such incidents happened in small creeks in the Raritan Bay in Monmouth County in August 2010. The deaths of thousands of fish resulted from the incident, as well as a very large fish kill in Delaware Bay, all due to extremely low dissolved oxygen levels, according to the website.
Read the full story in the Asbury Park Press