April 28, 2014 — State officials are investigating a wide-ranging fish kill spotted Monday, stretching from Fells Point in Baltimore harbor out into the Chesapeake Bay. Authorities have yet to pinpoint a cause, though warm weather tends to bring a die-off in local waters almost every year.
If spring is here, dead fish can't be far behind.
State officials are investigating a wide-ranging fish kill spotted Monday, stretching from Fells Point in Baltimore harbor out into the Chesapeake Bay. Authorities have yet to pinpoint a cause, though warm weather tends to bring a die-off in local waters almost every year.
Dead fish were seen floating off Fells Point in the city and beyond the Patapsco's mouth at Cox's Point in Essex and near Bodkin Point in northern Anne Arundel County, according to Jay Apperson, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment.
State investigators estimated the kill at "up to 1,000" fish, mainly Atlantic menhaden, said Apperson. But others said the number seemed higher. Educators with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Living Classrooms Foundation also reported seeing dead or dying shad in Baltimore harbor.
"There are fish spread for miles across the river — from the Key Bridge to the Inner Harbor," reported John Tapscott, an educator for the Annapolis-based bay foundation. He was aboard the Snow Goose, the group's workboat, which takes schoolchildren on educational cruises from Baltimore harbor.