Millions of Sardines Die in Harbor Near Los Angeles

The Southern California port of Redondo Beach swims a huge carpet of dead sardines. The authorities suspect that spring storms pushed the fish to the coast. It looks from afar like a giant shiny silver carpet, and soon it could start to stink. Millions of dead sardines and anchovies in the southern California port of Redondo Beach near Los Angeles has been discovered on the surface, fin to fin, and not only that: According to media reports, are the fish on the floor of King Harbor, in some places piled up the dead fish almost half a meter on.

The exact reason for the mass death is still under investigation, but authorities are already certain: A natural cause has had suffocated the fish. The assumptions are that spring storms pushed off the sardines and anchovies in the course of several days in the harbor. Also wandering hungry whales have been sighted, could have contributed to speculation about the end of the fish, it said in the Los Angeles Times.

The little creatures arrived in the marina, a total of four berths with about 1,400 boats. The water is only shallow, too shallow to such a huge quantity of fish - though Mini expenditure - to provide enough oxygen, officials were quoted as saying. Added complication is that there is little water in the harbor movements.

Already a few days we sighted a large number of boat owners snapping for air sardines on the surface. Now the dead animals everywhere, the walls of the docks to the boats around. It glittered in the only way the morning sun, marked eyewitnesses.

"It is a natural, but unusual event," said Andrew Hughan of the California Fisheries Board. "It is an obscenity." Now there when cleaning a race with time. Sooner or later, inevitably, the dead animals washed up on the surface, "and that will not be pleasant," quoted The Los Angeles Times, a fishmonger in the harbor.