Featured Story

Another fish kill in the Peconic River

PAUL SQUIRE PHOTO More dead fish are being reported in Riverhead town.
PAUL SQUIRE PHOTO More dead fish are being reported in Riverhead town.

Word of thousands of dead fish washing up on local shores might seem like old news at this point, but another drop in oxygen levels in local waters, coupled with a migration of bunker up the Peconic River resulted in yet another, separate fish kill over the weekend.

Though not as big as one that occured last month  thousands more bunker have washed ashore along the Peconic River near the Route 105 bridge.

Data provided by the U.S. Geological Survey — which has a station at the Route 105 bridge — show that algae levels spiked on Saturday, while oxygen levels fell once again to zero. As schools of menhaden — the scientific name for bunker — made their way through the bay and up the river, the result was thousands of fish gasping for air that, once again, wasn’t there.

“Looking at the data, this just reinforces what we saw the first time around,” said Dr. Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University’s School for Atmospheric Sciences. “That is, we have a confluence of events. First, the fish have to be there. Then there has to be something that pushed the oxygen levels down even lower.”

The Town of Riverhead received calls about the fish kill this morning and officials are currently investigating, once again, what to do with the fish. Suffolk County Legislator Al Krupski said no complaints had been filed to his office by about noon today.

According to Allison Branco, executive director with the Peconic Estuary Program, the recurrence at this point seems to be nothing more than a repeat of what happened last time — except, as Dr. Gobler pointed out, not quite as big in numbers.

“I think it’s pretty much all the same problems we saw in the last couple of weeks,” Ms. Branco said. “The fish started to move, and the algae spiked.”

Mr. Krupski said he had heard last Wednesday that bunker were starting to move and collect in the area once again.