Thousands of Dead Fish Wash Up on Texas’ Gulf Coast

Tens of thousands of fish washed ashore along the Texas Gulf Coast Friday, following a massive “fish kill” caused by lack of oxygen in the changing season’s warmer waters, according to officials.

The fish began to wash ashore about 65 miles south of Houston in Brazoria County, according to Katie St. Clair, the sea life facility manager at Texas A&M University at Galveston, reported The New York Times. Brazoria County park crews began to bury the fish so they would not rot in the scorching midday temperatures.

Bryan Frazier, the director of the Brazoria County Parks Department, said the dieoff was the result of a “perfect storm” of unfavorable conditions, as there is much less oxygen in warm water than cold.

St. Clair said climate change could have been a factor.

“Water can only hold so much oxygen at certain temperatures, and certainly we know that seawater temperatures are rising,” St. Clair said, according to NPR.

“As we see increased water temperatures, certainly this could lead to more of these events occurring,” St. Clair said, as The New York Times reported, “especially in our shallow, near-shore or inshore environments.”

Recent overcast skies and calm seas had interfered with how oxygen normally diffuses into the ocean water. Clouds lower tiny ocean organisms’ ability to make oxygen through photosynthesis, and more oxygen is added to the water through wave motion.

“Photosynthesis stops at night and may slow down on cloudy days, but plants and animals in the water continue to respire and consume free oxygen, decreasing the dissolved oxygen concentration,” Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Kills and Spills Team Region 3 spokesperson Lerrin Johnson told CNN.

Cleanup efforts have begun, but Brazoria County park officials said they expected thousands more dead fish — mostly Gulf menhaden — to wash ashore, reported The New York Times.

Frazier said fish kills like the one in Texas aren’t rare, adding that conditions would balance out as fish dispersed from the oxygen-depleted water and the waves started to pick up again.

“It should correct itself here in the pretty near future,” Frazier said, according to The New York Times.

The alarming blanket of fish followed a high of 92 degrees last week in Brazoria County.

In 2019, a report from the United Nations concluded that low oxygen levels were becoming more prevalent in warming coastal waters, posing a threat to fish.

During the warmer months of the year, an enormous “dead zone” typically forms in the Gulf of Mexico, but, according to the annual National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast, it will be about 4,155 square miles this year, which is smaller than normal.

St. Clair pointed out that the Gulf menhaden have an important role in the local ecosystem, and large fish kills could result in “cascading impacts,” The New York Times reported.

A post on the Quintana Beach County Park’s Facebook page informed visitors that the area had been mostly cleared of the fish.

“The pedestrian beach is cleared with the exception of a spattering of fish that the machinery couldn’t get. High tides over the next couple of days should sift the rest down into the sand and bury them,” the post said.