Dead Fish On the Lakeshore, Or Rather, 'What is That Smell?'
What's the story behind those stinky carcasses?
For the last several weeks, the shores and beaches of Lake Michigan from Chicago to Door County have been littered with little dead fish called alewife. Though a summer die-off is an annual event, the odor and sight of thousands of decaying fish along the lakeshore is getting some attention. Richard Benson, a staff member at Shoop Park Golf Course, has noticed. "None of the golfers are complaining, but with the east winds a few weeks ago, it was pretty ripe for awhile," he said. Though the reasons for this die-off are not completely understood, some understanding of the alewife and its relationship to Lake Michigan is a good starting point. In the early 1900s, locks and canals were constructed to make possible the shipping of goods between…
jo march
2:49 pm on Saturday, July 23, 2011
The smell off the shore of Shoop Park is an annual summer occurence quite independent of this year's bumper crop of dead alewives. While there are certainly more of the silvery fish on shore (a sign of ample food for lake trout and salmon, and so a positive indicator of lake health), the primary culprit at Shoop is the shin-deep algae caused by zebra muscles and phosphorus. http://dnr.wi.gov/org/… more ›