APOPKA, Fla. – Decades of work and millions of dollars have gone into restoring Lake Apopka, but now hundreds of dead fish are showing up along the shoreline.
Our News 6 team started receiving messages from residents concerned about the situation and set out Tuesday to see it for ourselves.
Andy Braddock, who spends time on the lake often, met our crew at the MacDonald Canal Boat ramp and invited us on his boat. He estimates the dead fish can be seen along 8 miles of the northwest shore.
“You can see 4-feet gar fish. You’ve got 8, 9, 10-pound bass, specks, shad,” said Braddock. “I even saw pickerel when I was out yesterday. I saw a pickerel in this lake for the first time.”
Braddock, an avid fisherman and scientist, says the volume and mass of dead and rotting fish is astounding.
“It’s pretty much the entire western shore of Lake Apopka, and Lake Apopka is the fourth largest lake in the state,” said Braddock. “This is astounding. Nothing like this has happened in this lake in a long time.”
Braddock says he started getting calls on Thursday from people who spotted the fish.
“Events like this aren’t uncommon. Something to this scale is not common,” he said.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission confirmed with News 6 Tuesday that they are investigating after receiving numerous fish kill reports. FWC staff took water samples and potential fish kill samples from the lake on Monday to be analyzed in a lab.
Braddock, who has also spent years studying the lake on his own, shared his concerns about chemicals that are sprayed to manage aquatic vegetation.
“I don’t believe that it’s the chemicals directly that killed the fish. I believe it’s when algae blooms. That’s directly linked to the spraying,” said Braddock.
FWC does use control methods, like selectively spraying, to remove invasive aquatic plants, like hydrilla, from waterways across the state. Information shared by the agency online says it is part of public land managers' mission to preserve and restore Florida’s ecosystems.
Our News 6 team asked if this technique has been used in Lake Apopka recently. The agency confirmed there was an herbicide spot treatment on Jan. 10 in two small residential canals connected to the southwest end of the lake.
Braddock says when large amounts of aquatic vegetation rot, nutrients settle down in the lake. He says it’s possible the recent temperature drop triggered the release of nutrients from the decaying plant matter, which creates an ideal condition for algae to flourish.
“When we have these warm and cold spells, you know, the bottom turns up, and you had a suspension of nutrients that fueled this giant algae bloom,” said Braddock.
An official cause of the fish kill has not been determined, and a spokesperson with FWC said it can take up to 10 days to get results from their lab samples. Once those results are in, they will be available to the public.
“I think there’s a lot more to this challenge than just spray or don’t spray,” said Braddock. “This lake is one of the most studied lakes, probably in the world in ecological literature, and there were a lot of theories about what we should do from very smart people that have other research facilities across the country and we’ve got 25 years of data now to go back and look at but we’re not doing that.”
Lake Apopka was once considered the most polluted lake in Florida, and News 6 has reported on how it has rebounded from decades of contamination caused primarily by farms that once lined the lake’s northern shore.
As a result of clean-up efforts, phosphorus concentrations in Lake Apopka have declined 69% since the late 1980s while water clarity has increased 93%, according to the St. Johns Water Management District.
Braddock says he has loved watching the comeback over the last decade and seeing it in its current state is just “really sad.”
“It has the stigma of being, you know, polluted,” said Braddock. “But when you’re out here it’s beautiful. I mean, this is an amazing place and I think it just needs to be managed better.”
FWC says fish kill reports from the public are vital in responding to events like this, we encourage the public to please submit fish kill reports to our Fish Kill Hotline at 1-800-636-0511.
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