Mystery of 100,000 dead fish which washed up on Arkansas river bank

Over 100,000 fish have been found washed up on the river banks on a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River, near Ozark.

Officials are investigating the eerie happening but experts believe that disease is most likely to be the cause. 

The drum fish were discovered by a tug boat operator on Thursday - a day before thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky only 125 miles away, in Little Rock.

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Drum fish: Some 100,000 of the species were found lining the banks of the Arkansas River

Arkansas River: The drum fish were found on a 20-mile stretch along the river near Ozark

David Price, who spotted the fish from his parents' Roseville house, located on the banks of the river, pointed and said: 'Over from down here at the bottom of the rocks, out maybe 40 or 50 feet, there were just thousands of fish along the shorebanks all the way around the river here. 

'This is kind of amazing because the the fish were about a pound and a half a piece.'

Travis Harmon of the Department of Environmental Quality said: 'Barges reported passing up river and churning up dead fish from the bottom of the river.

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'A single species is killed, and we don't know the cause. If it was toxic, other species would be affected.'

Fisheries officials collected some of the dying animals near Roseville to conduct tests and while Keith Stephens of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission says that a mass fish kill happens from time to time, this case is particularly unusual.

Fish kill: This is what a healthy drum fish looks like - and while fish kills are common, this one is unusual, experts say.

'The fish kill only affected one species of fish,' he said. 'If it was from a pollutant, it would have affected all of the fish, not just drum fish.'

Ozark is about 125 miles west of the town of Beebe, where game wardens are trying to find out why up to 5,000 red-winged blackbirds and starlings fell from the sky just before midnight New Year's Eve.

Biologists believe the bird deaths were stress-related from either fireworks or weather and are unrelated to the fish kill near Ozark, Mr Stephens said.

Although the two incident occurred one after the other, Mr Stephens said he believed that they were unrelated.

People have been warned not to eat the fish.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343677/Mystery-100-000-dead-fish-washed-Arkansas-river-bank.html#ixzz19z3r2mTL


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