SPARKS, Nev. January 19, 2014 (AP)
By SCOTT SONNER Associated Press
Most locals reacted like Rick Dinoso when he first heard that all the
fish in the Sparks Marina were dead — an estimated 100,000 trout, bass
and catfish.
"All the fish don't just die," said Dinoso, 37, an assistant manager at a nearby tavern who grew up in Sparks.
"That's a lot of fish," Wayne Weaver said Friday as he walked the 2-mile
loop trail around the 77-acre, man-made lake with wife, Dee. "That's a
lot of recreation lost."
Scientists say the massive fish kill was caused by a dramatic drop in
the water's oxygen content, which they say is not all that uncommon.
They believe it was triggered by a weeklong cold spurt in December when
lows hovered near zero at the former gravel pit converted into a marina
15 years ago along Interstate 80 just east of Reno.
Though testing is incomplete, state wildlife and environmental officials
are convinced there's no danger to humans or animals. There's been no
sign of any contamination like the pollutants that leaked into the pit
in the 1980s from a petroleum tank farm across the highway, they say.
Despite those assurances, city officials have been forced to respond to
concerned citizens. Most worry whether it's safe to let their dogs in
the water.
"It's not good for the fish obviously, but the water quality itself is
great and there's no health or safety issue," city spokesman Adam
Mayberry said. "Other than fishing, there's no indication you can't do
anything else out there that you have always been doing."
Sudeep Chandra, a limnologist at the University of Nevada, Reno known for his research at Lake Tahoe, agrees.
"I really don't think it is other contaminants, it's just the low
oxygen," he said. He said it likely occurred when the oxygen-rich warmer
waters on the lake's surface quickly cooled, sinking to the bottom of
the lake and causing a violent "turnover" of the waters.
A hot, dry summer may have contributed by spurring growth of oxygen-sucking algae, he said.
.....
Mystery of Nevada lake where 100,00 fish died off in a single MONTH
Fish at Sparks Marina near Reno, Nevada, died from lack of oxygen
Biologists can't determine what is causing the loss of oxygen
100,000 trout, bass and catfish washed up dead on the shores of the lake
By
Associated Press Reporter
PUBLISHED:
18:56 EST, 16 January 2014
|
UPDATED:
19:04 EST, 16 January 2014
State wildlife officials are trying to
figure out why all the fish have died in a northern Nevada marina where
the stocked fishery has flourished since the man-made lake was created
nearly 15 years ago.
An
estimated 100,000 trout, bass and catfish have died over the past month
in the Sparks Marina along U.S. Interstate 80 east of Reno, apparently
the result of a dramatic, unexplained drop in dissolved oxygen levels,
Nevada Department of Wildlife spokesman Chris Healy said Wednesday.
Scientists
say a bitter cold snap could have caused oxygen-poor waters to rise
from the old rock quarry's bottom to the surface, but they don't
understand what sparked the massive die-off.
+2
All of the fish died in the lake at Sparks Marina in Nevada - 100,000 in a single month
Fish biologists
confirmed low oxygen levels caused the death of an estimated 3,000 fish
in one corner of the lake in mid-December, but Healy said they thought
at the time that the event was localized and of limited impact.
Since
then, they've been unable to detect any live fish in the 77-acre lake.
Numerous dead fish have been removed from the lake's shoreline, and
Healy said it's likely the rest sank to the bottom.
'The
100,000 dead fish figure is something that is probably a pretty
conservative guess,' said Healy, who estimates they've stocked close to 1
million adult fish in the lake since they started in 1998.
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