March 29, 2023 — Dead fish in Florida. Beached whales in New Jersey. Sea urchins, starfish and crayfish washing ashore in New Zealand. Millions of rotting fish clogging up a river in the Australian outback. A mass fish die-off in Poland. Around the world, freshwater and marine creatures are dying in large numbers, leaving experts to puzzle over the cause.
In some cases, scientists say climate change may be leading to more algal blooms and other events that starve fish of oxygen. Warming oceans and marine heat waves are driving sea creatures from their normal habitats. Human activities including coastal shipping are suspected in a spate of recent marine mammal deaths in the United States.
Here’s a look at some of the events that led to the deaths of swaths of aquatic creatures around the globe in the past year.
Harmful algal blooms, called red tides, have sent scores of dead fish ashore in southeastern Florida in recent weeks. A similar red-tide event killed off thousands of fish in the San Francisco Bay Area last summer.