Fish kill strikes Lake Elsinore once again
Millions of dead minnows wash ashore
Michael J. Williams
The Californian
08/17/2009
One whiff of the breeze blowing across the lake Monday morning toward Lakeshore Drive told the story ---- another fish kill.
Between 10 million and 15 million threadfin shad minnows and a much smaller number of larger fish died over the weekend as a result of low oxygen levels in Lake Elsinore, officials said.
Many of them washed up on shore and work crews were busy removing the carcasses from shoreline along the northeast side of the lake where most of the public access areas are found.
"I've never seen anything like this anywhere," Colton resident Perry Jones said.
He was among nine anglers who braved the stench and ignored the strand of carcasses at the waterline at Whisker's Beach late Monday morning. Amid the myriad silvery shad bodies, a couple bloated carp carcasses lay near Jones' post.
He said the presence of other fishermen led him to try his luck, despite the distasteful conditions ---- the odor wasn't quite as bad by the water as it was up higher by the road.
"Well, some other guys are doing it," he said of his decision. "It does bother me a little bit, and I'm probably not going to stick around too much longer."
Redlands resident Lyndon Lau, who said he is a 20-year-veteran Lake Elsinore fisherman, accepted the situation stoically, noting the bass he was after probably were gorging themselves on the lifeless bait fish.
"This is not every year ---- just once every few years," he said of the die-off. "But I've never seen it like this."
The massive die-off occurred just three weeks after the first fish-kill in several years occurred in the lake. This episode, however, was exponentially larger than the one in late July, when an estimated 500,000 shad died along with 6,000 carp, bass and other larger species, according to officials' estimates.
"The causes are the same as far as we can tell," said spokesman Mark Norton of the Lake Elsinore and San Jacinto Watershed Authority, one of several agencies that oversee the lake. "We've consulted with Lake Elsinore experts and from what we can see, it continues to be the low oxygen level that is unfortunately hitting the shad and causing the die-off. It can be attributed to warmer temperatures, a lower lake level and a higher lake water temperature."
The lake's temperature now stands at a season high of about 80 degrees and the level has dropped to about 1,240 1/2 feet, officials said. That's nearly 2 1/2 feet below this year's peak, which was in March near the end of the rainy season.
Dissolved oxygen levels dipped to 1 to 2 milligrams per liter Saturday and Sunday, said Ron Young, general manager of the Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District, which infuses the lake with recycled water and operates an aeration system intended to buttress the oxygen supply.
Young said the shad, which are about 1 to 4 inches in length, are at risk at 2 milligrams per liter.
He said that in an attempt to improve the lake's state, the district doubled the aerating system's operations from an average of about four hours per day to eight hours. The system typically kicks on when underwater sensors detect that oxygen levels have fallen, usually in the late afternoon. The system has been operating at double its normal load since Saturday, Young said. That is contrary to some reports, including the assertion of a lakefront resident, that the plant on Lakeshore Drive had not been operating.
"We amped it up on Saturday and Sunday, and it wasn't enough, unfortunately," Young said of the system's inability to offset the fish kill.
