Towns collects dead fish at Beach’s critical wildlife area
Town of Fort Myers Beach Environmental Sciences Coordinator Keith Laakkonen and a maintenance task force were cleaning up dead fish from the critical wildlife area on the south end of the island Tuesday.
According to Laakkonen, the state-owned land has been naturally closed off for roughly three months causing low oxygen and improper photosynthesis to kill off much of the sea life in the water.
“(This was caused by) low-dissolved oxygen,” said Laakkonen. “We probably had an event where there were a lot of clouds one or two afternoons and, if you get that situation, then anything in the water such as the existing sea grass probably quit photosynthesizing. If that quits, it quits putting oxygen in the water. Then, at night time, the fish keep using oxygen and they’re dead.”
Laakkonen reported that he and the town workers found red fish, snook, trout, mullet and blue crabs.
“Mullet are pretty hard to kill,” he said. “That gives you an idea of how low the dissolved oxygen gets. There’s still some live stuff in here. We’ve definitely seen some live blue crabs and some of the fighting conchs are still alive. Those things will help dissolve the rest of what is in here.”
Laakkonen believes this may be a first for a particular beach to be closed up for this long.
“This has been closed off probably three months,” he said. “It closed and opened a few times over the fall through spring. This is the first time I think it’s been closed off this long. To get it to open up again, it’s going to take a storm.”
Not only has sea life perished, but the mangroves that are closest to the water are dead as well. High salinity is again the cause, says Laakkonen.
“Over time, this area may end up looking like something different then it does today,” he said. It may become more of a marsh. But, this is still valuable state land. It’s part of the critical wildlife area, and it’s still important to birds.
“Since this may not connect again for who knows how long, we need some heavy rain in here to help flush out the system and bring more water into it. The salinity is also really, really high in here. It’s a natural event, but we have people living close by so it may become a concern. Just from the stench and smell alone, hopefully we can come out here for a few hours and get rid of it.”