TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Something deadly is lurking through Florida’s waters, killing the state’s endangered sawfish, yet no one knows what.
In the last six weeks, 20 sawfish have floated up dead. NBC affiliate WTVJ said whatever it is, it’s not harmful to humans, but the mystery has left researchers scratching their heads.
“Unknown, rare occurrence, we really haven’t seen anything like this before,” Dr. Michael Parsons of Florida Gulf Coast University told WTVJ.
Parsons, along with other researchers, have partnered up to try and solve the fishkill mystery.
“All of us obviously want to know why it’s happening and if there’s anything that can be done about it,” another member of the team, Dr. Dean Grubbs of Florida State University, said.
Grubbs is an expert on the smalltooth sawfish, one of the five species of sawfish. Found in Florida and the Bahamas, the species began to decline in the lower Florida Keys; however, experts started to see a recovery in the population.
“We were just celebrating less than a year ago the fact that we are starting to see signs of recovery of the population in the US,” Grubbs said.
Now that the fish, which is part of the ray family, is on the decline again, Grubbs told WTVJ it’s “an emergency” to find out what’s causing the deaths.
“I think it’s an emergency that we figure out what’s causing it, and if it’s anything that can be reversed and anything that can be avoided in the future if this becomes something that happens annually, that would be a huge concern, obviously,” he said.
Grubbs told WTVJ that there are only about 450 adult female sawfish in Florida waters right now.
“Sawfish are pretty mobile, they can move pretty fast, why did they stay in that area, whatever this is must hit them pretty rapidly,” Grubbs said.
According to WTVJ, sawfish aren’t the only victims of the fishy mystery. Other species in the Florida Keys are also behaving erratically, including snappers, snooks, and groupers. The animals have reportedly been swimming in circles, “which becomes a death spiral to the bottom.”
While Parsons and his team of skilled researchers work to find the cause, he says he has an idea as to what the culprit is.
Parsons, an expert on dinoflagellate algae, single-cell organisms, one of which causes red tide, told WTVJ he believes a different species of algae could be behind the recent uptick in sawfish deaths.
“I would say the sawfish mortality are a big problem. I would say the erratic fish behavior and the other fish mortalities are unusual, but we’re not seeing the numbers of dead fish that we saw with red tide, so it’s not the scale of a red tide fish kill, but the fact that sawfish are dying is very concerning,” Parsons said.
According to Parsons, it will take weeks or months to determine if algae is the killer. He told WTVJ that last summer’s record high water temperatures may have played a role in allowing algae to proliferate much more than normal.
However, as of now, the cause remains a mystery.
Smalltooth sawfish are endangered under the Endangered Species Act, becoming the first marine fish to receive federal protection as an endangered species in 2003, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
