Scientists tally damage a day after fish die-off in troubled Hood Canal
HOODSPORT, Mason County — Only a day before, Bob Pacunski had watched through a diving mask as the underwater death throes of Hood Canal fish happened all around.
Deep-water rockfish, wolf eels and lingcod had hovered near the surface Tuesday, listless and gasping. The carcasses of perch, sand lance and sculpin drifted in the surf. On the shore nearby were the massive bodies of 10 lingcod, their toothy mouths gaping.
Wednesday, rockfish and eels still clustered near the surface, but they were swimming. Only one fresh lingcod carcass had appeared near the dive spot north of Hoodsport, along with five older carcasses they hadn't seen Tuesday.
"What a difference a day makes; it's amazing," Pacunski said from the deck of a boat on Hood Canal, water dripping from his orange-and-black dry suit. Only a day after thousands of suffocated fish washed ashore in the southern hook of Hood Canal, the immediate danger appeared to have eased. The conditions that apparently triggered the third major fish die-off here since 2002 had diminished. The oxygen levels in the water, which plummeted late Monday, had risen to a point that fish could survive near the surface.
"I wouldn't say we're out of the woods necessarily. It could repeat itself," cautioned Jan Newton, a University of Washington researcher. "It's anybody's guess about where we're going to go from here."
Even so, a glance over the side of the boat Wednesday was enough to tell state researcher Wayne Palsson that something was different. On Tuesday the water near shore had been clear and unusually cold, suggesting that deep, oxygen-starved water had suddenly risen to the surface. Wednesday, the water was murkier and warmer as a steady rain fell and wind whipped the water's surface.
"It's the weather," Palsson said.
Wednesday afternoon, Palsson and two state biologists plunged into the frigid fjord to further assess the damage. They were among several government and tribal officials and local residents who had converged on the canal.
One of them was Larry Alf, a local fisherman who crunched over oyster shells on the Hoodsport beach and counted dozens of tiny stickleback and perch, along with flounder, sole, sculpin and even a chinook salmon, left by the tide to rot. "I just can't believe that there's this much, killed that fast," said Alf. "This just breaks my heart to see all this."
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Scientists tally damage a day after fish die-off in troubled Hood Canal
