Lake Santa Fe endures fish kill
Residents say they began to notice a large number of dead fish on Friday.
By Cindy Swirko
Staff writer


Residents of Lake Santa Fe say thousands of fish have died and are floating in the water.


The vast majority of the fish appear to be shad in the two-inch range, but one resident spotted a dead gar, a much longer fish.

"There are thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Just a huge number of dead fish. A neighbor took his boat out and could see them across the surface of the lake. It's shocking," said resident David Richardson. "It smells very bad. The concern one has to have is that these are fish that the other fish live on, and this apparently is a massive kill."

Residents started noticing the fish Friday. By Saturday the volume of dead fish had ballooned.

A spokeswoman with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission did not return phone messages Saturday.

Natural causes of freshwater fish kills in Florida include rapid fluctuations of temperature, changes in the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water or biological factors such as spawning, bacteria, viruses or parasites, according to a pamphlet from the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

"The periodic depletion of dissolved oxygen in a lake or waterbody is by far the most common cause of fish kills in Florida," the pamphlet states. "These events are easy to recognize because they usually affect many different sizes and species of fish, whereas cold temperature-related or spawning-related fish kills tend to affect only one or two species
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