I live in the Caribbean and seeing dead fish in the beach washed by the waves is very rare. But I’ve been checking fish iNat observations in Yucatan, where the Gulf of Mexico is (Mexico, please), and a great piece of fish observations comes from dead fish that reached the shore (excluding observations of dead fish caused by red tides). Is this a normal phenomenon in beaches? Or it means there is an abnormally elevated mortality in the Gulf? Is the Gulf too polluted? I’m particularly curious because I’m planning to go to the Gulf to fish because it’s much less developed (far less tourism and hotels, which means more nature and a bohemian vibe typical of Yucatan’s fishing villages), there’s more fish and I thought, it would have less contamination (I know the rest of the Gulf is a stew of poisons but the Yucatan Gulf doesn’t seem to me to be as polluted as other places), but now I don’t know what so many dead fish mean.
Are there any explanations to these dead fish? Is this excess of dead fish actually a thing?
I think the valuations are skewed because the fishermen here do not participate on Naturalista so the majority of Observations are going to be those fish that reach the shore because they are deceased, which will make it look like a larger percentage of fish are deceased than are.
This is not to say there are not pockets where there are periodic die-offs, however there does not appear to have been one recently that I can find any evidence of, and the fishermen here are very vocal in the redes.
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Still, they are quite a lot of dead fish observations. And here in the Caribbean those dead fish observations almost do not exist.
I do not know. I see one observer who seems to walk on the shore and so only uploads dead fish as she comes across them. She uploaded exactly two the last time she walked on the beach on 28 February in El Cuyo, and one 3 days before that in Rio Lagartos.
Where these fish die and why I do not know.
I can say, there is no warning in effect, no panic in redes, but if you feel unsafe, do not fish (or do not eat the fish). We all eat chac chí twice a week and feel very fine but you need to do what is comfortable for you. :)
I do not see a lot of people who go out in the ocean here to “sport fish” here. They go to QR to do this. (I have one friend who specifically keeps a house in QR for this.)
Those who fish here are fishermen or those fishing to eat, not document typically. This may also effect the ratios, giving you a sense that more fish are dying than truly are. We eat a LOT of fish here, so if you were to count all the fish in the mercados and smaller delivery services (six in my heighborhood alone), then insert all those fish daily against the numbers of dead ones you are seeing, I suspect it is quite a small number.
That said, Por Esto gives news town by town, as I am sure you know, so perhaps you can reassure yourself with town/port specific information.
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Even if the observer specializes in dead fish, those are too many dead fish. If the observer did the same here I don’t think the dead fish would be as much. I may be overreacting, maybe nothing would happen to me if I eat fish from that area, but still I think this phenomenon is something and I’m curious about it.
Any other ideas? Maybe too many dead fish means the sea has a lot of them, I don’t know.
differences in currents that wash dead fish ashore instead of going elsewhere
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