Bemused walkers found "hundreds of thousands" of whitebait fish trapped in a tidal pool.
It is the second time a shoal has been trapped in the same pool, near Plymouth, in less than two weeks.
And unusually high numbers of whitebait have also been
causing the sea off west Dorset to bubble as mackerel chase the
whitebait for food, causing them to jump in the air.
Peter Wilkes and his fiancé Carla Hosking were out enjoying
a Sunday morning stroll in Plymouth with their 20-month-old son James
when they thought they saw the pool at Firestone Bay looking as if it
had "iced over".
On closer inspection, they found that it was the
reflection of thousands of small dead fish which had become trapped in
the shallow water.
"We saw the pond and it looked almost iced-over," said
railway station worker Mr Wilkes. "A lot of people were taking photos
and we went down to take a closer look. There were little girls trying
to push the fish back into the tidal pool to keep them alive. There were
hundreds of thousands of whitebait. I would say about 90 per cent of
them were dead. Some were still flapping about on the concrete or
swimming about over the dead ones lying at the bottom of the pool. I
don't think the others will survive very long.
"A lot of people were saying the fish might have run out of oxygen. We did notice there was a froth around a lot of the fish.."
Guy Baker, communications officer for the Marine Biological
Association, said sand eels had been known to be caught in the tidal
pool. He said this was the season for mackerel to be hunting small fish
and could have chased them into the shallow waters. Spring tides are
also bigger at this time of year, so the fish may have simpl
Read more: http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Onlookers-confusion-thousands-whitebait-fish/story-22818756-detail/story.html#ixzz3Bt6K5WKT
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