LAKE COUNTY — Dead carp are turning up on beaches along the Northshore and in Lakeport and authorities recommend burying the fish.
Lakeport Parks Department employees have picked up more than 300 of the fish from the beach lining Library Park since Thursday, according to parks maintenance employee Andres Gonzalez. Record-Bee columnist Terry Knight said he took two calls Thursday and five calls Friday from people who live along the shoreline and wanted to know what to do with the dead fish.
“What”s killing them, we don”t know. People are asking what to do with them, and some people are filling their garbage cans with them,” Knight said.
The Lake County landfill does not accept dead animals or fish. Likewise, Lake County Animal Care and Control does not pick up dead animals of any kind. Department of Fish and Game Fisheries Biologist George Neillands said the DFG doesn”t pick up dead carp, but recommended either leaving them alone or burying them along the beach.
“This is pretty common this time of year, because water levels have reduced in lakes, ponds and streams, temperatures go up, and we have algae blooms. That reduces the amount of dissolved oxygen available in the water, and carp are very susceptible to that. They”re one of the first to die when dissolved oxygen levels are lowered – you notice them swimming to the surface to gulp for oxygen,” Neillands said.
Nice resident John Bohlken said he counted approximately 20 dead carp around his boat dock on Wednesday. He said he is not worried about disposing of the dead fish, and said the smell they produce is part of living on the lake.
“We”re starting to smell them a little bit today. Either something will eat them or they will decompose,” Bohlken said Friday.
Skip Simkins, Clear Lake lands coordinator with the Lake County Department of Public Works, said his office has fielded relatively few calls about the die-off. He said water clarity in the spring caused a significant aquatic weed growth this year, and the weeds are now decomposing and depleting the oxygen in the lake.
Simkins said between eight and 10 tons of carp died in the late 1980s, leaving patches of water 6 feet wide covered with them along the shoreline where the wind blew them.
Nice fisherman Ed Nassarre said he believes the fish are dying of the same disease they died of back then, Spring Viremia of Carp Virus. Knight said he believes it is a disease, but not that one.
“It”s only affecting carp. No other fish are dying,” Knight said.
Carp weigh between 10 and 12 pounds, according to Knight, and are not considered a game fish. He said the non-native species was first brought to California from Germany in 1872, and came to Clear Lake near the turn of the century.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
