Dead fish wash ashore in Darien, surrounding area
DARIEN — In a year of strange and unprecedented events, yet another has washed ashore in Darien.
Residents have noted an increase in dead fish on the waterways of the town and its surrounding areas, one particularly at Ring’s End Bridge near Gorham’s Pond. All the fish have been the same species, Atlantic menhanden, know as bunker.
Will Healey, media
relations for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said DEEP has received multiple reports of a menhaden fish dead in Long Island Sound over the last few weeks.
“We believe this is likely due to a natural event, possibly related to cold water temperatures and abnormally high abundance of menhaden within inshore areas for this late in the fall, but we are still investigating,” Healey said.
Local officials noted it is not a Darien-specific issue.
“I understand this situation has affected bunker
fish from Branford to the Hudson River, so it is not a local issue. I know that DEEP has been asked but am not aware of whether they have investigated,” said David Knauf, director of Darien’s Department of Public Health.
On Dec. 1, Riverkeeper.org stated that dead fish have been reported in shoreline areas of New York and New Jersey as well.
Over the last two weeks, Riverkeeper has received numerous reports of dead and dying fish spotted throughout a 60-mile area from New York Harbor north along the Hudson to Mystery Point in Garrison, and as far away as the North Fork of Long Island.
More were seen scattered along the shorelines at Red Hook, Brooklyn; Englewood Cliffs, Manhattan’s West Side, Piermont Pier, Tarrytown, Ossining and Cortlandt. They were seen by the hundreds at Crotonon-Hudson over the weekend.
Riverkeeper reported observers took videos of fish gasping for air while swimming in circles and dying in the waters off the Upper West Side of Manhattan and Horan’s Landing in Sleepy Hollow. Dead fish were also reported earlier this month along the Newark Bay shoreline in Bayonne, N.J.
Bill Cavers, chairman of Darien’s Advisory Commission on Coastal Waters,
said he has consulted with Peter Linderoth, water quality director for Save the Sound.
According to Linderoth, many on the Sound are seeing dead menhaden.
“There are an extraordinary number of bunker this year. Peter just went from the Bronx to Bridgeport (on a boat) this morning and saw a nearly continuous line of bunker the whole way,” Cavers said.
One theory is that these large numbers overgrazed, using up their local food supplies, and a die-out has resulted.
“Peter says that DEEP also is wondering if the fish became skinny and then the lowering of water temperatures is then killing some off,” Cavers said. “... There are many deaths in the Hudson River also, and New York DEC is doing a study to see if a virus might be to blame.”
According to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, menhaden are typically found in large, tightly packed schools. They prefer inshore waters during warmer months and are most common in estuaries and tidal creeks. They spawn and spend the fall and winter offshore of more southern states and migrate north to Connecticut during the spring. Schools typically swim near the surface, where they can often be seen flipping and splashing.