Officials: Crooked Tree fish kill caused by low oxygen levels

On last night’s newscast we heard from concerned villagers of Crooked Tree who, at a loss to explain the sudden mass death of fish in the waters surrounding their community, pointed to the work of a U.S. scientist using an electric stunning device to collect fish samples for his research. This morning a delegation of government officials visited the village and News 5’s Kendra Griffith was there to meet them.

Kendra Griffith, Reporting
Today members of the Fisheries Department, Department of Environment, BAHA, and Audubon were in Crooked Tree to continue the investigation into the fish kill.

Aldo Cansino, Environmental Officer, D.O.E.
“What we’re doing at the moment is we’re getting various readings of the water, water quality testing. The primary parameters that we are testing at the moment are of course the dissolved oxygen, PH, TDS, temperature.”

This morning the men were out at Spanish Creek and this afternoon they visited Black Creek, where the largest concentration of dead tilapia was seen.

Aldo Cansino
“What we notice is that from the lagoon here, as we move to Spanish Creek the dissolve oxygen levels drop. The causes, we are still speculating. It could be a variety of things. Algal growth could be one, but it’s very preliminary at the moment. What we are trying to do right now is establish what could be the possible causes and of course D.O. is usually the prime culprit.”

“Algal bloom is one of the probable causes why the D.O. would drop, algal bloom, there are some correlations with temperature. As you are aware last week we had some peak in temperatures and so that could be one cause and not necessarily the level or height of the water.”

Rigoberto Quintana, Assister Fisheries Officer, Fisheries Dept.
“This is a complex ecosystem that we have in the Crooked tree Lagoon. You have a lot of vegetation that was covered with water and now I think a lot of organic material is decomposing, so that might be a possible cause of the low oxygen levels in the water.”

And while there are many factors that can contribute to the low oxygen levels and the resulting fish deaths, what the experts think is an unlikely factor is a piece of equipment called an electrofisher, which was used by researcher Peter Esselman in the waters of the lagoon.

Rigoberto Quintana
“The electrofisher is just a device equipped in a boat with a certain voltage that is regulated in the boat so that would just paralyze the fish for a while and then they would collect the fish but that won’t kill the fish. Just paralyze them and you sample them with the net, bring them into the boat and then you do whatever you have to do, if you need to weigh them and measure them and then release them back into the lagoon.”

Tanya Williams Thompson, Advocacy Manager, Belize Audubon Society
“When we were approached about this project Audubon did have some concerns. It is a relatively new technology in terms of Belize. However, we did our research and we felt comfortable that there would be no negative impacts from the research.”

“The reason why we provided approval for this research is that there have been past fish kills in the Crooked Tree Lagoon and we really need to find out what is the reason behind these fish kills as well as we wanted to see what was the fish ecology within the lagoon.”

Esselman was granted a research licence by the Fisheries Dept. to conduct studies on the distribution of tilapia in Belize and ecosystem and vegetation mapping. Rigoberto Quintana is the Assistant Fisheries Officer at the Fisheries Department.

Rigoberto Quintana
“Last year once we issued the research license we would go there to verify what we be the possible impacts of the electrofishing equipment. We were in White Waters Lagoon and the impacts were minimal. Apparently he has done a lot of sites in Belize. This I think is the last site that he was doing in this area and I think by coincidence that the fish start to die out in Spanish Creek and he was doing the surveys in this area in the lagoon.”

Kendra Griffith
“So you think there is no correlation between the two incidents?”

Rigoberto Quintana
“I don’t think so, no.”

Rudolph Crawford, Outgoing Chairman, Crooked Tree
“I couldn’t look at it now as a coincidence like what was said in a meeting we had here couple days ago, because the fish didn’t die before the research started and no more fish die after he finished.”

Not only is outgoing village chairman Rudolph Crawford not buying the safety of the electrofisher, he says the council and residents had no idea that research was going to be conducted in the village waters.

Rudolph Crawford
“They did not respect the community; I must say that, and the village council, because if in fact they were going to do a research they should come and see the village council or the village council chair, who I was at the time. I was passing one day and I saw a boat out in the lake and it was drifting kind of slow so I asked somebody, what that boat doing out deh and they said we understand some people are doing a survey on the water.”

Tanya Williams Thompson
“Part of the process of doing research in any protected areas is to inform the community. If that was not done, that is our fault. As far as I know that was done in this case. I don’t know if everybody knew about it, but normally that is the procedure we go through.”

Kendra Griffith
“Do you have anything to say regarding the allegations that employees there at Crooked Tree took advantage of the machines ability to catch fish and were selling them in Orange Walk.?”

Tanya Williams Thompson
“That is a concern for us. It is really an accusation that harms our image, our public image and so we do have to investigate it. However, I must point out that the concern came from the fact that there was an icebox on the boat. The icebox does not hold ice; it holds water, so that when the fish is taken from the water they can put it back into fresh water and so the fish doesn’t die. It does not hold ice and I think that’s where the concern about selling fish came from.”

Audubon Advocacy Manager Tanya Williams Thompson maintains that the N.G.O. is committed to a community-based approach to conservation.

Tanya Williams Thompson
“We must state categorically that B.A.S. sees that community, the Belizean public on a whole, as our most important stakeholders; no way would we try to do anything that would cause a negative impact to them.”

Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.

There have also been reports of fish deaths in Maskall and the government officials say they will be looking into that incident as well.