Cold may scale back fish yield
By Bo Petersen - The (Charleston) Post E-Mail Print 1 Comment Reprint or license Text Size: tool nameclose
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The winter cold might have taken a bite out of Lowcountry fish.

Sea trout appear to have been lost when water temperatures in December and January dropped low enough to kill, suggest the trammel net surveys by S.C. Natural Resource Department biologists. The finding is from early season spot sampling, so it's too soon to be conclusive.

But the catch was "comparatively low." That doesn't bode well for the popular inshore finfish or other catches like red drum or shrimp.


In the winter of 2000-01, prolonged water temperatures at about 46 degrees destroyed an estimated 97 percent to 99 percent of the shrimp population and caused a massive die-off of sea trout. It took two seasons for the shrimp to recover fully and five seasons for sea trout.

This winter wasn't so bad. The water didn't stay quite so cold for so long.

But inshore temperatures twice hovered in the upper 40s for days at a time and had an impact. Hundreds of thousands of dead menhaden were found on Folly Beach one morning in January, apparently killed by the cold water. Thousands of dead starfish on Isle of Palms were found in December in an earlier cold spell.

"It doesn't look like [water temperatures] got lower than the die-off we saw in 2000-2001. But it's lower than we hoped," said Mel Bell , DNR fisheries management director.

Anglers also say they are catching fewer sea trout than usual.

"A few here and there, small ones. That's about it," said Graham Able of Haddrell's Point Tackle & Supply in Mount Pleasant.

"There is a little bit of a double whammy" because water temperatures dropped to that critical point for the second winter in a row, said Steve Arnott, DNR biologist. In 2010, similar frigid weather in January caused some die-off in the Lowcountry.

Because trammel nets require the fish to swim into the netting, the low numbers might be deceptive, biologists said. The surveys were done just as waters began warming. Temperatures are now in the mid-50s.

"The fish generally are moving into deeper water and are lethargic. We won't know until May," said Phil Maier, DNR coastal reserves director. "We need to wait and see for a couple more months, until the waters warm back up."