Earlier this month, a baffling phenomenon occurred at a beach in Hokkaido, Japan when countless dead fish washed ashore, creating a silver ‘blanket’ that stretched over 1km.
Less than a week later, a similar incident occurred, this time at a fishing port in Shima.
Approximately 30 to 40 tonnes of sardines washed up there, sending fishermen into a frenzy as they hurried to clear the carcasses.
Local officials have admitted that they are struggling to determine why this is happening.
According to The Mainichi Shimbun, an estimated 30 to 40 tonnes of sappa, or Japanese scaled sardines, washed ashore at a fishing port in Nakiri on 13 Dec.
Fishermen hurried to collect the dead fish, afraid that the decomposition of the carcasses would lower the oxygen concentration in the water and affect other marine life.
Source: The Mainichi Shimbun
Speaking to the newspaper, a local fisherman recalled seeing large schools of sardines at the port two days earlier on 11 Dec.
About three tonnes of the fish were caught that day.
Then, the following day, dead fish began to appear, prompting locals to report the sighting to the Shima Municipal Government.
By 13 Dec morning, there were so many dead fish that they began to wash ashore, creating a blanket on the surface of the water and land.
A fisherman who had been working in the area for 25 years remarked that he had never seen such an occurrence before.
In fact, they only began catching sappa in Nakiri last year.
“It makes me feel the marine ecosystem is changing,” he told the Mainichi Shimbun. “I wonder if krill scattered by anglers on the port’s levee may be affecting this.”
A levee refers to a structure that prevents the overflow of a river.
Meanwhile, fishing port officials have said that they are currently unable to determine the cause of the phenomenon.
They are planning to take samples of the seawater and examine them at a research centre to figure out what might have happened.
One theory is that Japanese amberjack may have chased the sardines into the port. The latter fish then ran out of oxygen in the tight space.
This incident comes less than a week after about 1,200 tonnes of dead sardines and mackerel washed up a shore in Hokkaido on 7 Dec.
The carcasses covered over 1km of coastline in Hakodate, The Asahi Shimbun reported.
While the reason for the strange occurrence was also a mystery, the Hokkaido Research Organization’s Hakodate fisheries experiment station noted that fish sometimes wash up because of abrupt temperature changes in the water.
They could also be fleeing from predators, such as dolphins.
Numerous news outlets all over the world reported about the unusual event, with British tabloid The Daily Mail even insinuating that the release of wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant caused the sardines’ death.
This prompted Japan’s Fisheries Agency to debunk the claims, which they called “unsubstantiated information”.
“There have been no abnormalities found in the results of water-monitoring surveys,” the agency clarified, adding that they are “concerned about the proliferation of information that is not based on scientific evidence”.
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Featured image adapted from The Mainichi Shimbun.
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