|
 Wildlife deaths from January cold snap keep mounting
By ARNOLD MARKOWITZ
Waterfront News Fishing Writer
By the time we stop dwelling on how bad the January fish kill was, we’ll all have a better idea of how bad it really was.
That will take a while. Just now, it’s hard to overlook how bad it still looks with most of the casualty assessments at preliminary stages.
It appears especially bad in Everglades National Park’s vast marine area, part of Biscayne National Park and a few other areas where careful survey methods have been used.
Fatalities mount:
Here are some samples from the most detailed fish fatality reports.
Everglades National Park: “We have compiled over 150 observations that indicate large areas where many marine fish were killed in Florida Bay, Whitewater Bay, Gulf Coast rivers, and other marine areas,” states a report by park scientists.
“The observations suggest that tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of common sportfish species such as snook and tarpon were killed by the cold.”
They compiled a fatality list of those and other species — pilchards, barracuda, needlefish, hogfish, ladyfish, cowfish, bonefish, gray (mangrove) snapper, mullet, catfish, goliath grouper, filefish, lookdown, mojarra, jack crevalle, pinfish, burrfish (a puffer), grunts, redfish, four shark species, flounder, spadefish and angelfish.
Everglades biology chief Dave Hallac with Jeff Kline, Jimi Sadle, Sonny Bass, Tracy Ziegler and Skip Snow compiled the report.
It covered the last two weeks of January and also documented other casualties, including manatees, crocodiles, alligators, rare butterflies and plants.
“Over the last two weeks, more than 60 dead manatees have been observed throughout the park’s marine waters,” it said. “Over 70 dead crocodiles were observed. It is likely that more manatees and crocodiles were killed by the cold, but were obscured by mangroves and difficult to see during our aerial surveys.”
A crocodile found dead in Buttonwood Canal was known to the staff. They tagged it in 1986 when it was a hatchling. Dead, it was 13 feet long and weighed 450 pounds.
Unprecedented statistics:
Non-fish wildlife suffered throughout Florida.
“The figures are astounding and unprecedented,” a state Fish and Wildlife Commission report said. “More than 4,500 sea turtles were rescued from the cold water in January. Manatee carcasses continue to appear, putting the deaths for 2010 at more than 200 after only one month. For comparison, the highest number of manatee deaths for a single calendar year is 429.”
On the positive side, FWC said at least 80 percent of the rescued turtles lived, and a dozen rescued manatees were in rehabilitation.
Although there’s evidence that tarpon found refuge in warmer Atlantic depths off Miami, there’s other evidence suggesting major losses elsewhere.
Calamities were discovered in tarpon nursery areas by Jonathan Shenker, a professor at Florida Institute of Technology at Melbourne, whose talk to the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust was reported in the Florida Keys Keynoter.
“What really worries me is the young. It's like the entire year’s class has disappeared,” Shenker said.
Close to home, he took a close look at Indian River Lagoon where, he said, “Pretty much everything died
up there.”
Peter Frezza, a fishing guide who’s also the Everglades research manager for Audubon of Florida, began surveying the consequences on Jan. 6, after the first of two fierce cold fronts.
He continued through Jan. 24, updating his scorecard as dead fish floated from the bottom to the surface, and made his field notes available to “Waterfront News.”
The notes document staggering losses. Here’s a sampling.
Jan. 10, northeastern Florida Bay: “A few dozen dead and dying adult snook (24-38 inches) in Dynamite Pass. A couple thousand dead striped mojarra at the mouth of Taylor River. A few dozen dead snook (20-40 inches) and tarpon at the mouth of Taylor River. Lots of snook and tarpon still alive here though, but in bad shape and upside down. Dozens of dead and dying tarpon at the mouth of McCormick Creek.
“About 20 dead goliath grouper up to 80 pounds at the mouth of McCormick Creek... Saw a couple hundred dead bonnethead sharks and barracuda throughout northeast Florida Bay... Saw a total of 26 dead species of fish in Florida Bay today.”
Jan. 12: “At one of our research sites on the Turkey Point power plant property, I observed an extraordinarily high number of adult tarpon (alive and well) in the large main channel leading from Biscayne Bay to the power plant. Also bonnethead sharks, lemon sharks, southern stingrays, barracudas alive and doing fine in here. A quick look at the Biscayne Bay shoreline outside the canal revealed many dead bottom fish scattered about (mainly grunts, snapper, cowfish).
“Stopped on the C-111 canal off the 18-mile stretch and on the saltwater side observed about a dozen people cast netting and dip netting dead and dying striped mojarra by the thousands. Also observed the snagging and cast netting of a number of large snook. I reported this to FWC law enforcement. The snook were all alive here but they looked in bad shape, disoriented and milling about on the surface, some with white spots forward of the dorsal fin.”
Jan. 13, northeastern Florida Bay: “Dozens of dead juvenile tarpon (10-15 pounds) and large barracuda floating now on the north side of Cross Bank. Hundreds of dead scattered ladyfish in northeast Florida Bay. On the northern shoreline of Little Madeira Bay and around Taylor River mouth, I estimated a couple thousand dead striped mojarra, 350 dead snook and 300 dead tarpon, 4 dead bull sharks, 500 dead gray snapper, hundreds of ladyfish, white mullet and hardhead catfish...
“It appears that nearly all the living tarpon and snook I saw here on the 10th are now dead... Up East Creek between Little Madeira Bay and East Bay were 300 striped mojarra, 30 snook, 40 tarpon in same size class as the ones in Little Madeira Bay.”
Jan. 14, Flamingo-Whitewater Bay back country: “Only a couple hundred dead tarpon and snook in and around the boat basin at Flamingo, However hundreds more on the bottom outside the marina and in the deep channels...A couple hundred dead ladyfish in Coot Bay now floating. Many dead snook and tarpon in Coot Bay on the bottom. Difficult to assess how many because they have not floated yet but there were dozens in certain spots. Also numerous dead goliath grouper in Coot Bay.
“The number of dead ladyfish and hardhead catfish in the Whitewater Bay system has to be in the millions...from one spot off the shoreline over a thousand of each of these species could be seen dead on the shoreline... On navigating the entire eastern section of Whitewater from Tarpon Creek to Oyster Bay, including short distances of the rivers, along with the ladyfish, dead snook and tarpon were encountered on just about every shoreline that was leeward to a north or northwest wind.
“An estimate of dead snook actually seen in this area was 15,000. Estimate of dead tarpon seen in this area was 400; these tarpon all being juveniles in the 5-15 pound range and concentrated in the southeastern section of Whitewater Bay.”
Signs of recovery:
Despite all that bad news, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Florida’s vast network of shorelines, streams, estuaries and canals do contain safe places for cold-sensitive fish to duck such a disaster if they get there in time.
Maybe enough made it to start organizing a sort of rebirth. Bob LeMay, a guide who fishes deep in the park’s labyrinthine backcountry, reported good signs of life in mid-February.
“For about two weeks you couldn't find a ladyfish or small jack crevalle in Whitewater. Now they're back in good numbers, and I'm beginning to find the snook again as well. I suspect that the volume of fish in the interior is far greater than any of us realize, so lots of them did survive the weather.
“I think that lots and lots of fish along the coastal areas have moved into the interior since the kills. One day you'll work shorelines and not see one snook, then next day they'll be everywhere as they leave the deep backcountry creeks and start the move back out to the coast. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.”
In mid-January, it seemed reasonable to wonder if snook will ever recover as a significant population.
Those fish are so important to Florida that a research facility and crew of scientists in St. Petersburg are devoted just to them. At the end of January, it might have seemed appropriate for Ron Taylor, the leader of that outfit, to announce an official period of mourning.
It’s a good thing he didn’t.
“Things look good, or better than last week,” he reported on Feb. 15.
“We have many snook that survived. Many large breeders. A lot got killed but it looks promising.”
 |
|
