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Sunday, April 23, 2006
Smell of death
Residents worry about hundreds of fish washing onto the shore
By JOHN CHARLES ROBBINS Staff writer
Down along the south shore of Lake Macatawa, just a few yards from the swanky waterfront restaurant now under construction,
hundreds of dead, rotting fish have washed ashore.
Countless other fish near death bob in the murky brown water.
Lakefront property owners are upset and concerned.
"I want to know what the devil's going on," said Kevin Lastacy, who lives on East End Drive.
Lastacy said the spring always brings a few dead fish here and there, but nothing like he's witnessed in the last week.
"I've never seen it like this. It makes you wonder. What's happening? I don't know," he said, resting his tired
arms on a pitch fork gouged into the sand.
He and a neighbor, armed with a long-handled shovel, were busy Saturday gathering up the beached fish, some fresher than
others.
Hundreds of dead fish -- big dead fish, not the typical piles of small alewives -- are choking the shore of this lake
that extends from Holland city westward to Lake Michigan.
Graham Peaslee, a Hope College chemistry professor who has studied Lake Macatawa, suspects the problem is the result of
a unique set of circumstances, punctuated by a rapid rise in water temperature.
A spike in the temperature can rob the water of oxygen, and the bigger the fish, the more oxygen it needs to survive.
The fish are suffocating.
Peaslee, working with the Macatawa Watershed Project, is in contact with a number of volunteers who help monitor conditions
on and in the lake.
During a phone interview Saturday evening, Peaslee was reviewing temperature readings of the lake.
"The temperature went from 45 to 58 in 13 days -- there's your smoking gun right there," Peaslee said.
Peaslee said if the inland lake water temperature rises slowly, it gives the big fish the chance to swim back out to deep
and cold Lake Michigan.
"But if the temperature goes up quickly like that, the fish get caught in the inland bays and they're toast at that
point," he said.
Another probable culprit was the cold and wet spring weather, which filled the streams and Lake Macatawa with "lots
of fresh stuff," Peaslee said, meaning silt and other pollutants.
Another factor in the large number of dead fish may be that Lake Macatawa has a larger fish population than it has had
in many recent years.
Regardless of all of those factors, Peaslee said the large number of dead fish dotting the shore warrants contacting state
officials to investigate.
"That's more than normal ... it is unsettling," Peaslee said.
Whatever the problem, it has spelled the demise of a variety of fish from carp to sheephead, bass, bluegill, pike, walleye,
dog fish, and even a few "muskie" (muskellunge).
Lastacy, 39, takes care of a marina in the area and is used to disposing of dead fish when the weather warms. Usually
he buries the mess before the smell gets too potent.
"But never like this ... not 200 to 300 pounds of fish a day," said Lastacy.
Lastacy and others also wondered why the birds were staying away from this endless buffet.
Larry Wiersma is concerned for the people who will begin to enter the water as the weather improves.
"If something harmful is killing these fish, what's going to happen to human beings?" said Wiersma.
Walking up and down the beach near East End Drive, Wiersma counted the rotting carcasses -- Five, 10, 20, 30.
He estimated there were 50 large dead fish caught up in a patch of cattails nearby.
"Normally, I'll see three or four, but nothing like this," he said, shaking his head.
"I don't know what's going on ... when I saw a few big ones gasping for air down by the marina, I started to get
a little concerned," he said.
Wiersma, who's had his place on the lake for nine years, is simply astounded by the numbers.
"This is 30 times the fish I've seen on the shoreline in the spring -- and it's recent," he said.
A couple of blocks to the west, it's the same smelly story.
"I have been here 19 years and I have never seen this many fish die at one time," said Harvey Klinger, who has
a house at the end of Lake Street.
Klinger had to deal with 20 to 30 large fish he found floating a few days ago in front of his place, next to the old fire
dock.
"Man, they stunk like crazy," Klinger said.
At Kollen Park late Saturday afternoon, the stench from the blankets of dead fish on the rocks was hard to miss.
An informal inventory of the dead fish along the shore under the park's decorative boardwalk neared 400.
Brian De Bold, 41, of Holland, was at the park to fish with his son, Tory, 17.
De Bold said he's fished since he was old enough to hold a pole.
"I'm an avid angler and I've traveled all over, and I have never seen anything like this," he said, looking
down at the piles of bloated, eye-less fish.
"Something's going on," De Bold said.
Contact John Charles Robbins at (616) 546-4269 or john.robbins@hollandsentinel.com.
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