Recently on a Tuesday morning the Los Angeles suburb of Redondo Beach was gripped by the vision of hundreds of thousands of dead fish in the harbor of the town. Initial fears and internet chatter speculated that this was another environmental disaster that we needed to look into, why would so many fish (in this case sardines) suddenly show up in one place at one time but also sadly dead? The vast majority of King Harbor was silver with sardines filling every available inch of the surface, along the harbor wall and against the jetties the fish were stacked up below the surface too as deep as 18 inches in some areas. There was initial panic that some new hazard existed just off the California coast which was now bringing in the gloomy results for the locals to see. In the past some of this coastline has struggled with poor water quality but has made huge improvements over the last 15 years, officials wondered if the sardines reflected a change to the bad old days.

It turns out that the giant school of sardines, estimated at over 1,000,000 dead in the harbor had essentially suffocated trying to escape a major storm further out to sea. A natural occurrence but nevertheless one that demonstrates the impact of what scientists term a dead ocean.

Redondo Beach, CA (AP Photo/Alex Gallardo)

Following some research after the findings on Tuesday authorities declared that the incident was entirely due to nature. A very strong storm was churning off the coast the previous weekend bringing extremely strong wind gusts that made for a violent ocean along the California coast. This fact coupled with it being the peak season for well migration meant that a huge school of sardines headed for shore, or more specifically looking for a protected harbor which they found in Redondo Beach. The problem being the harbor is not big enough, deep enough or has enough movement to create sufficient oxygen for its new guests. The sardines ended up in King Harbor where four marinas house nearly 1500 boats. The water in the harbor is not that deep, only 22 feet at high tide and did not provide enough oxygen for such a huge influx. Residents had noticed fish struggling earlier in the weekend but the population continued to swell due to the weather offshore. Studies of the water in the harbor showed that oxygen levels in the water on the day of the disaster were more than five times lower than what is considered critically low. The sardines had no chance really.

In an area that relies on tourism the town perform cleanup operations as quickly as possible with truckloads of the former sardines being taken away. While on this occasion event was entirely natural scientists point out that some regions of the ocean are showing increasingly lower oxygen rates due to decaying algae. The mass of man-made pollutants added to the oceans is always heightened by heavy rains which washes more than normal levels into coastal vicinities. In bays and harbors where the water is more still the oxygen rates lower and the impact on fish rapidly mounts. Experts have shown that certain areas in our oceans due to currents have gradually transformed into dead zones that don’t provide the necessary oxygen or nutrients required to support marine life. Most famous of all is the North Pacific region commonly known as the “Pacific Trash Vortex”, even the animals that survive in such regions are taking on high levels of toxins which then infiltrate the food chain as they in turn are eaten.