| Lots of dead fish on beach - Why?
Went to a local beach on south coast of Cornwall today. Took our son rock-pooling and started to find a few dead fish. At first we only noticed small ones in rock pools - I guessed possibly having been stressed by frequent catchings by other children on the beach. Then we saw lots of immature flat fish being left behind by the ebbing tide - we dashed around catching as many as possible and putting them back in the sea or a large very deep pool that was likely to remain safe until the tide came back in.
The more we looked, the more dead fish we found, mainly small ones, but eventually even about half a dozen cuckoo wrasse - beautiful red and blue fish, and some others which someone identified as baby dog-fish, all unmarked but dead in rock pools or on the shoreline. One chap even hauled out a large conger eel from a pool, obviously dead.
Why so many dead fish on the beach? The weather has been pretty grim down here lately, but not stormy enough to drive so many fish onto the shore. It was quite distressing to see so many, although a couple of anglers were keenly collecting them for bait. Is it usual for fish to get stranded by the outgoing tide? Whats going on?  |