This week’s snowstorm may not have been a deadly weather event like hurricanes and fires often are to humans, but massive fish kills can be seen – and smelled – along Alabama Gulf …
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This week’s snowstorm may not have been a deadly weather event like hurricanes and fires often are to humans, but massive fish kills can be seen – and smelled – along Alabama Gulf coastal waterways.
The record-breaking snowfall that blanketed Baldwin County on Tuesday also brought with it record-low temperatures to levels mullet and some other species that populate habitat in the region’s warmer waters cannot survive.
Brian Jones, Dauphin Island Sea Lab's Alabama Aquarium curator, said similar cold weather fish kills have happened “every five to 10 years in our area” with the last one being in 2018. He said mullet appears to be the main species that has “succumbed to the cold,” but it will not greatly affect the ecosystem as they are “a fast-growing fish that produces thousands of eggs.”
It would take a mass fish kill of a less-common species like snook or tarpon, Jones said, to have a noticeable impact on the ecosystem of the lagoon. These species might require more time “to bounce back” compared to the mullet population, which should be unnoticeable “within a year or two.”
“It seems to be a natural, inevitable phenomenon,” Jones said.
Speckled trout and snook could potentially be found among the mullet washed up in the lagoon, Jones said, “albeit in lower numbers.” The overall severity of the fish kill “may not be obvious for a few more days” as more information is gathered on the types and amounts of fish found dead.
Jones said the mullet’s typical temperature tolerance “depends on how fast it gets cold” and the duration of the cold spell. He said the fish will likely seek deeper waters if they are able to and “likely that only a percentage” of the “weaker” fish died in the lagoon from the freeze.
Gulf Shores dipped to 16 degrees the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 22, when Little Lagoon, a shallow body of water nestled between Hwy. 59, West Beach Boulevard and Fort Morgan Road, could be seen in parts iced over, especially along its canals. Lows were forecasted below freezing for six days in a row. The lowest temperature in Baldwin County was recorded in Robertsdale and Loxley at 7 degrees, according to National Weather Service data. After the storm on Tuesday, temperatures remained below freezing through much of Wednesday before dipping into another hard freeze overnight into Thursday morning.
Thousands of mullet were floating on the surface of the lagoon’s shores and its creek and canals winding throughout nearby neighborhoods Sunday afternoon.
"Even if tens of thousands of fish (mullet) died, the ecosystem is overall resilient," Jones said.
Little Lagoon Preservation Society President Dennis Hatfield said it’s “almost predictable when we get a hard freeze” that fish will die, but not from frozen waters. They will fall victim to “plummeting water temperatures” before the water gets cold enough to freeze.
“As a fisherman, I know if you want to catch fish in cold weather,” Hatfield said, “you need to go to deep holes. Those are not as affected by the temperature changes.”
Hatfield said in the man-made canals in the Eastern portion of Little Lagoon "you can almost bet on" mullet kills, specifically white mullet, during a hard freeze as the canals create "basically shallow water traps" for the fish.
A rise in water levels is typical before a storm, Hatfield said, and post-storm the water level typically decreases as a response to the changing temperature pressures. However, in the 25 years he has lived in the area, he said he has never seen the lagoon as low as it was after this most recent storm.
Hatfield said the lagoon is constantly receiving flowing water from the Gulf, even in low tide, and that the water movement had no effect on fish casualties. However, the flow of water in the lagoon, he said, might point to why more fish have now been spotted in areas around Little Lagoon as they have floated from the man-made canals where they likely died on Wednesday after the initial cold shock.
Grant Brown, City of Gulf Shores spokesman and Recreation and Cultural Affairs director, told Gulf Coast Media Sunday he could see “in my backyard, there’s white egrets and blue herons” having a good snack.
“There’s nothing anybody can do. We just have to let nature take its course,” he said, noting they will likely be eaten in part by blue crabs and other crustaceans in the lagoon. “If we have a fish kill, we (the city) bury them in the sand dunes to give fertilizer for the sea oats.”
The lagoon is state waters and “mostly private property surrounding.” The city owns a few access points and "recently acquired 53 acres on the southwest shoreline," while "a significant portion of the western shoreline" is owned by Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge, Brown said.
The city will clear fish kills from city beaches.
Brown said pelicans also suffer from hard freezes, but there’s a different process for taking care of them. So far, the city hasn’t received any reports of freezing or dead pelicans.