Major fish kill at Hood Canal
SEATTLE – State Department of Fish and Wildlife officials are alarmed at the third major fish kill in the Puget Sound’s Hood Canal in five years.
The canal also had major fish kills in 2002 and 2003.
“It’s emotional seeing this happen,” said Wayne Palsson, a department researcher.
Palsson spent part of Tuesday diving in the canal to document the damage after carcasses of flounder, ling cod, rockfish, wolf eels and shrimp were found washed up on the shores of the southern part of the canal, in the western flank of Puget Sound.
Officials said some usually deep-water fish were gasping at the surface for oxygen.
The canal was afflicted with lethally low levels of oxygen this summer.
But until this week, Hood Canal’s oxygen problem was confined to deeper water, so most of the fish could survive by staying in shallow water.
Jan Newton, a University of Washington scientist, said the low-oxygen water shifted to the surface on Monday about midnight so quickly that fish apparently had nowhere to go and suffocated.
Dead fish then began surfacing throughout the southern third of the canal.
“It does appear to be substantial and widespread,” said Greg Bargmann of the state Fish and Wildlife Department.
Newton said two possible reasons for a sudden rise of low-oxygen water were winds from the south or cold ocean currents.
“What we don’t know is why it happened so quickly,” said Brad Ack, director of the Puget Sound Action Team, the state agency coordinating the recovery of Puget Sound and Hood Canal.
The Hood Canal oxygen levels are considered to be at their lowest levels during the last five decades. Pollution from septic tanks and possibly other sources is strongly suspected of aggravating the problem.
Bargmann said officials have made no estimate of the number of dead fish. They may not try to because so many are thought to have died and sunk to the bottom.
The magnitude of the fish kill appears similar to that of the 2003 event, the largest known to date – and this one covers more of the waterway.