https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/14/ive-never-seen-anything-like-this-japan-says-reason-behind-1200-tonnes-of-fish-washing-ashore-is-unknown

could be their tritium factory runoff (edit, probably not)

could be sea temperatures rising

anyway

I guess we're fucked

  • iridaniotter [she/her]
    ·
    9 months ago

    Experts have speculated that the migratory fish in both areas had become stranded after being chased to the point of exhaustion by amberjack and other predatory fish. Mass mortality events can also occur when there are sudden drops in the water temperature, causing the fish to go into shock, they added.

    But no one has been able to confirm the cause. “The cause is unknown at the moment,” Mikine Fujiwara, a local fisheries official, told the newspaper. “We plan to sample the seawater at the site and examine it to uncover the cause.”

    Are we going to read the article and genuinely search for answers or are we just going to circlejerk?

    • MaoTheLawn [any, any]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Ok, no one can confirm yet, but if you look at other sudden mass die offs of fish, the cause has been temperature or salinity changes. The idea that they got chased into exhaustion seems a little absurd.

      I would posit that they're keeping it quiet because the implications of structural cataclysmic dieoffs could mean disrupting fishing season with catch quotas or even outright cancellation.

      However, the fact that they've all washed up on a beach is a bit different to other mass dieoffs, which are recorded by catch numbers at sea. Time will tell what the reason for this one actually was. A similar thing happened in Orkney, Scotland recently, which they put down to natural causes