The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has instructed Central Coast Council to remove many hundreds of dead fish and dispose of them following their discovery along of the foreshore of Wyee Bay on Lake Macquarie at Mannering Park.
Locals say they started seeing the dead fish as early as Wednesday last week and the EPA says it started to take action on Friday afternoon when it was reported to them.
An EPA spokesperson said Council was notified and both immediately sent out officers to collect fish and water samples for laboratory analysis.
“Since initial inspections, the EPA has observed hundreds of dead fish of various species and sizes,” the EPA spokeperson said.
“Field officers also noted greying around the gills, which could suggest oxygen depletion.
“A decrease in oxygen content in water is a natural event that can cause rapid fish deaths.
“The EPA and NSW Fisheries have been out in the field again over the weekend collecting further water and fish samples, and seeking to identify any potential pollution sources.”
The Hunter Community Environment Centre (HCEC) is also conducting its own investigation into the fish kill.
People from the Centre, volunteers and researchers from the University of Newcastle were already in the same area on Saturday, August 6, at a citizen science day conducting a seagrass survery.
HCEC Co-ordinator, Jo Lynch, said they encountered “many many hundreds” of dead fish and other marine life including a stingray near the Wyee Bay marina.
“It didn’t just affect the fish, it was the whole bay,” she said.
“It’s obviously linked to oxygen deficiency but it could also be the introduction of a nutrient load as well as the recent rain which could lead to the fish dying, but we don’t know where that nutrient load came from.
“We took some samples of fish and some water samples and it will be a week or two before we get any results.
“This is not the first time this has happened but one of the locals who attended the seagrass survey told us this is the worst in severity in the eight years she’s lived there.”
The investigation remains ongoing and the EPA is requesting that if the community has any further information that may assist with its investigation to phone the EPA on 131 555 or Council’s Customer Service Centre on 1300 463 954.
The EPA says that the dead marine life are expected to be disposed of by a Council clean-up team at a landfill that has a licence to dispose of the waste.
Sue Murray
I had a steel boat moored just north the Wyee Point Marina, and I went on board one day to discover that the hull below the waterline was too hot to touch. The water in that basin must have been near 50 degrees C. It would have cooked a fish easily. Obviously the outflow cooling water from Vales Point.
The experts should be able to determine if it was the heat in the water that caused this fish kill.