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Will a Sudden Climate Change Kill Millions of Fish?
By Elena Grace Flores
It was very disturbing to see visuals of countless of bloated fishes through the internet news portals covering Philippine fish kills from the year 2002 to 2011. Reports from Taal Lake, Batangas located south of Manila, the Philippine capital initially blamed the strange phenomenon to climate change! We cannot deny the fact that abnormal weather changes are indeed happening anywhere in the world but is it believable to have this kind of extensive damages at this point in time – that is solely nature’s work? Based on the recent fish kill experience in Batangas last June 2011, it was not environmentally harmful only – it harmed the society, economy and the people’s lives. This is where around 2,000 metric tons of fish were found floating in Taal lake. The unfortunate occurrence affected seven other towns in the province where almost 500 fish cages had extensive fatalities. The minimum loss in the Philippine economy was estimated at 200 million Philippine pesos.
Further studies indicated that the massive fish kill was due to habitually low dissolved oxygen or the DO level content found in the waters of Taal Lake according to the Department of Agriculture based on marine testings done. A standard of 4-6 parts per million or ppm is essential for the survival of fishes but Taal Lake had only 1ppm during those dangerous times. Taal volcano’s increasing activity may also have something do to with Taal Lake’s DO level along with droughts, long dry spells and sudden strong rains but experts were not convinced that the causes are limited to these natural calamities due to the extensive damages. BFAR, the government agency tasked to investigate the matter found numerous violations of the Code of Practice for Aquaculture and local government ordinances on proper fish cage management and these were concluded to have significant contributions to fish kills in Taal Lake. Among others, the man-made causes include: improper fish cage management and overcrowding of fish in the cages. Some cages were found to have been overstocked with depths increased to 15 meters instead of the prescribed 5 meters. This certainly implies for more fish cage mismanagement issues. Sure enough, the prescribed 20 fishes per cubic meter for every cage and 30 fishes per cubic meter or higher depending on the water circulation for open water were also found to be violated. For instance, the cages in question were found to contain 30 to 50 fishes per cubic meter. This is definitely making those fish cages susceptible to climate changes. Just imagine 20 gold fishes placed in one aquarium being fed daily without changing the water! This is very deadly for the fishes. Yes, in lakes there’s this natural phenomenon called water overturn due to changes in weather patterns that can cause some extent of fish kills but not like the tragedies that happened in Batangas. Will a sudden climate change kill millions of fish? Not really…the major fish kills learned from these incidents are not merely caused by natural circumstances. It’s the “greed” in men that made mother earth turn against us!
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