CAMERON COUNTY, TEXAS -- Texas Parks and Wildlife personnel were out this week on Boca Chica Beach investigating the latest fish kill from the persistent red tide that has plagued the coastal waters of South Texas for a month and a half.
"The fish kill that we are looking at today is primarily made up of large striped mullet," said Wily Cupit, a Coastal Ecologist.
Since early October, the toxic algal bloom has killed millions of fish along the lower Texas coast from north of Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande.
Hundreds of spawning redfish have died on South Padre Island, and recently the harbor at Port Mansfield suffered a large fish kill.
"We have had red tide that has been confirmed in the Laguna Madre. We have had spots of it from Port Mansfield all the way down to the Lower Laguna."
Texas Parks and Wildlife marine scientists are hopeful the cooler temperatures that are beginning to prevail will curtail the bloom, and are as yet not prepared to release total fish mortality data.
"At this point, we are still looking. We are still counting fish. We are still getting reports of fish kills, and we are waiting for this event to die down so we can actually pull all the data together and get a good estimate."
The effect on the fishery also remains to be seen, and may not be known for many months.
"This is a natural event that happens and fisheries are very resilient, and they can and do bounce back from events like this."
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