Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

Above is a YouTube video of the fish kill featuring Baykeeper John Torgan.

By Peter B. Lord
Journal environment writer

A few hundred dead menhaden were discovered near Bullock Cove in East Providence Thursday by one of several teams that was sampling upper Narragansett Bay for what it believed were worst case conditions, high temperatures, low oxygen and neap, or weak tides.

John Torgan, Save The Bay's Baykeeper, said he considered it a relatively small fish kill and the fish were already several days old.

No one reported the fish kill to the state Department of Environmental Management, according to spokeswoman Gail Mastrati and there was no word as to whether it was related to a sewage overflow nearby about a week ago.

Torgan said he believed conditions in the Bay will improve as temperatures cool and tidal flushing increases.

"We expected bad conditions and we found them," Torgan said. Much of the upper Bay had oxygen conditions so low the water would not support marine life.

"It's not a huge cause for alarm," said Torgan. "But it does underscore the problems that we have out there."

The water sampling program has been done since 1999 by a team from Brown University, the state Department of Environmental Management and Save the Bay who call themselves the Insomniacs. Click here for more information on the team and for data on oxygen conditions.

 Tags  environment

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