Thousands of fish wash up dead along Texas coast due to lack of oxygen

Thousands of fish washed ashore along the Texas Gulf Coast due to “a low dissolved oxygen event” in warm water last week, Fox News reported. 

The Gulf Menhaden fish were found dead at the far end of Bryan Beach, Quintana Beach County Park officials said, adding that the pedestrian beach is mostly cleared with the “exception of a spattering of fish that the machinery couldn’t get”.

“Fish kills like this are common in the summer when temperatures increase. If there isn’t enough oxygen in the water, fish can’t breathe,” the Park officials said in a statement in Facebook post, adding that the “perfect storm” led to depleted levels of oxygen inshore.

 “When the water temperature rises above 21 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit), it becomes hard for menhaden to receive enough oxygen to survive,” the statement in the Facebook post said.

“Shallow waters warm more quickly than deeper, so if a school of menhaden are trapped in the shallows as the water begins to heat, the fish will start to suffer from hypoxia,” the Facebook post statement further added.

The lack of oxygen causes the fish to panic and act erratically, which depletes oxygen levels even further, Quintana Beach County Park officials said.

"As we see increased water temperatures, certainly this could lead to more of these events occurring, especially in our shallow, near-shore or inshore environments,"  New York Times reported quoting Katie Saint Clair, the sea life facility manager at Texas A&M University at Galveston.

The dead fish were first spotted on Friday, when, according to the National Weather Service, the temperature was 92 degrees Fahrenheit in the Brazoria County.

“It appears the last of the fish have washed in,” Quintana Beach County Park offivials said. “The most recent are deteriorated to the point of being shredded skeletons,” they added.