Whether or not you’ve been down to Lake Merritt recently, you’ve probably started to hear (and smell) a lot about the fish die-off that has happened over the last few days at the lake and nearby waterfronts. The algae bloom that started it all is still not fully understood. According to the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, Oakland city crews are going to start cleaning up the dead fish before the coming heat wave makes a bad situation even worse.
Read Oaklandside’s comprehensive reporting on what’s going on and what might come next.
KQED reporting cites an expert calling this “a wildfire in the water” from a fish’s point of view.
A crowdsourcing project on inaturalist to “collect observations of dead organisms related to the 2022 Harmful Algae Bloom in the San Francisco Bay” is housing photos of any organism that appears to be dead related to the algae bloom. Images include dead sturgeon, crabs, bat rays, striped bass, anchovies found in the Lake Merritt, delta area, Alameda, Jack London, and elsewhere in the Bay.