Photographer finds hundreds of fish dead

CATAHOULA PARISH, La. (KNOE) - At the Black River near Jonesville, photographer Cindy Thompson headed down to the riverbank and saw what comes most summers, a fish kill.

“Just was a never-ending stream of dead fish,” Thompson said.

There were hundreds of dead fish floating down the river.

“We decided to drive down and look at it and it was a terrible and amazing sight,“ Thompson expressed. “You could smell the dead fish with the windows rolled up in the air conditioning on.”

Wildlife and Fisheries Technical Advisor Bobby Maxwell explained how fish kills are a normal and natural occurrence. Nature’s way of flushing things out.

“Summertime we have warm water and warm water carries a lot less oxygen than cooler water,“ Maxwell said. ” So we’re already starting out with kind of a low level of oxygen in the water. If you put a number of cloudy days on top of that they’re very still plants quit producing oxygen or and they start consuming oxygen.”

It can happen in many different ways.

“How we’re getting to that low dissolved oxygen can be a number of different factors,” Maxwell said.

He also wants people to know it will clear up on its own.

“They’re not they’re not going to be offensive to look at or smell after a few days.”

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