ALMA, P.E.I. — The watershed co-ordinator near a recent fish kill calls the situation discouraging.
More than 2,000 dead brook trout were collected on Friday, Aug. 28, from a stretch of water between Marchbanks Pond to the Confederation Trail in Alma.
“Frustrating? Yes. You work hard to get fish populations up and you think you’ve got ‘er and you’re doing well,” said John Lane, co-ordinator of the Cascumpec Watershed Association.
"These were a lot of young fish that were the future of that whole water system. Then all of a sudden, 2,000-plus are gone. Discouraging – I’m an optimist, but I get discouraged, too.”
There was not a lot of silt in the water, and the water temperature was OK, said Lane.
“That would say those weren’t the cause,” said Lane, adding the source of the kill is higher up in the watershed.
“It’ll be a process of elimination for them, finding out the sources. That’s much more difficult. That’s where the province and the federal government scientists will work on trying to determine what happened.”
Two previous fish kills in 2010 and 2017 went unsolved, said Lane.
“I think at that time, their suspicions were on pesticides that got into the watershed,” said Lane.
The most recent kill was not noticed for a few days, which will make it harder to determine the cause of death because the fish were partly decomposed by the time staff from the province and the watershed group got out to retrieve them.
The watershed group keeps an eye on the rivers in heavy rains, but this year has been tricky.
“The rains have been so sporadic,” said Lane “One area there’s no rain, a few miles up the road, there’s half an inch of rain in half an hour and so it’s really like throwing a dart. It’s been very difficult.”
Lane anticipates some work will be done upstream to help prevent a similar incident in the future.
Samples have been taken and sent for analysis, and the incident remains under investigation by conservation officers.
