Wave of dead sea creatures hits Chile's beaches

Wave of dead sea creatures hits Chile's beaches
4 May 2016


Heaps of dead whales, salmon and sardines blamed on the El Nino freak weather phenomenon have clogged Chile's Pacific beaches in recent months.

Last year, scientists were shocked when more than 300 whales turned up dead on remote bays of the southern coast. It was the first in a series of grim finds.

At the start of this year, a surge in algae in the water choked to death an estimated 40,000 tons of salmon in the Los Lagos region, where the Andes tower over lakes and green farming valleys down to the coast. That is about 12 percent of annual salmon production in Chile, the world's second-biggest producer of the fish after Norway.

This month, some 8,000 tons of sardines were washed up at the mouth of the Queule river. And thousands of dead clams piled up on the coast of Chiloe Island.

Authorities blamed a "red tide" of algae.

They banned fishing in the affected region, putting thousands of fishermen out of work.

"We have red tides every year in southern Chile, but this time it reached further north," said Jorge Navarro, a researcher at the marine institute IDEAL. "It affected bivalve populations (such as clams) that had never before been exposed like this" to the algae, he said.

On the shores of Santa Maria Island off the center off Chile's long coast, cuttlefish have been washed up dead in the thousands. Various beaches in the center of the country were closed meanwhile as the specimens of the dreaded Portuguese Man-of-War jellyfish, normally foreign to the area, floated nearby.

More:
https://www.afp.com/en/news/15/wave-dead-sea-creatures-hits-chiles-beaches

Environment & Energy:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1127100988