Lake Erie is still probably the most fucked up lake I've seen in the US. The beaches around Sandusky, where there's a big theme park, were loaded with dead fish. It confirmed miasma theory when I went there. Lakes Superior and Michigan can be lovely but Erie is a wasteland.
Dead fish washing up on the Lake Erie beaches used to only happen in the late winter/early spring when the lake thaws and all the fish that were frozen in the ice would float to shore. These die-offs are natural but less visible since hardly anyone goes to the beach in March, and scavenger wildlife just coming out of hibernation or migrating back north quickly snap up any carcasses as soon as they wash up.
But fish die-offs are starting to become more common in the summer due to algae blooms. Fertilizer runoff from farms in Indiana and western Ohio flows down the Maumee River into the lake, which causes algae growth to explode and remove any oxygen in the water and make it toxic. Fish end up dying en masse from suffocation or poisoning. Animals won't touch these carcasses so they just pile up on the shores and rot.
Since the algae thrives in warm water the problem gets worse and worse every year as the summers get hotter and the winters get warmer.
Lake Erie is still probably the most fucked up lake I've seen in the US. The beaches around Sandusky, where there's a big theme park, were loaded with dead fish. It confirmed miasma theory when I went there. Lakes Superior and Michigan can be lovely but Erie is a wasteland.
Dead fish washing up on the Lake Erie beaches used to only happen in the late winter/early spring when the lake thaws and all the fish that were frozen in the ice would float to shore. These die-offs are natural but less visible since hardly anyone goes to the beach in March, and scavenger wildlife just coming out of hibernation or migrating back north quickly snap up any carcasses as soon as they wash up.
But fish die-offs are starting to become more common in the summer due to algae blooms. Fertilizer runoff from farms in Indiana and western Ohio flows down the Maumee River into the lake, which causes algae growth to explode and remove any oxygen in the water and make it toxic. Fish end up dying en masse from suffocation or poisoning. Animals won't touch these carcasses so they just pile up on the shores and rot.
Since the algae thrives in warm water the problem gets worse and worse every year as the summers get hotter and the winters get warmer.
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