Thousands of dead fish wash up in lake Chaplain, Vermont, USA #Fish #Vermont #USA

Within the last few weeks, thousands of dead fish have washed up on the shores of Lake Champlain. As our Ike Bendavid learned, the recent high temperatures may have contributed to the fish kill but they were not the primary reason. However, that doesn’t mean warm weather won’t be a factor later in the year for wildlife on the lake.

Joy Bliss of Highgate Springs says she was walking the beach on the Missisquoi Bay when she noticed something.

“Dead fish– dead fish!” she said.

And it wasn’t just a few.

“I didn’t count but they were all lined up on both sides of the beach here,” Bliss said.

Vermont Fish and Wildlife Biologist Bernie Pientka responded to the call from other residents in the area two weeks ago.

“Came up and gave it a look-see and saw that there was a few hundred fish between here and the other areas I looked at,” Pientka said.

After realizing there were thousands on the Vermont side washed up in the Missisquoi Bay area, he reached out to our neighbors up north in Quebec and found out they were seeing something similar in their part of Lake Champlain.

“They were looking into as well– just kind of an odd situation,” he said.

Pientka says it was the same types of fish washing up– yellow perch, sunfish and pumpkin seed. That means there wasn’t a mass issue or a spill in the lake that would have affected all species.

Courtesy of wcax.com

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