Title:
Getting to the Bottom of a Fish Die-Off in Southern
California
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
People in a community on the Pacific coast in
Southern California awoke in March to a sea of dead
fish. About eight hundred fifty sailboats and
powerboats come and go from the marina at King
Harbor in the city of Redondo Beach. But the
sardines that swam into the marina never swam out.
Estimates put the number of dead fish in the
millions. Reporter Pete Demetriou from KNX Newsradio
in Los Angeles spoke to a man who has lived in the
area for twenty-six years. The man said the die-off
was as bad as he'd ever seen. But it was cleaned up
pretty quickly, so there was not too much smell. He
remembered that about five years ago there was
another serious kill-off of fish in King Harbor. It
was caused by a harmful algae bloom, a so-called red
tide of microscopic organisms that spread from time
to time. But this time scientists found no toxic
algae in King Harbor, so it was a mystery. A
scientist at the University of Southern California
released findings of continuing research in his
laboratory. Professor David Caron said fish
collected on March eighth, the day of the kill,
tested "strongly positive" for domoic acid in their
stomach contents. Domoic acid is a powerful
neurotoxin produced by one kind of microalgae. Fish
such as sardines and anchovy can get poisoned when
they eat plankton that have eaten the algae.
Researchers from USC confirmed that plankton
collected about twenty kilometers southwest of
Redondo Beach the next day had very high levels of
domoic acid. This would support a theory that the
fish became poisoned in coastal waters before
entering the harbor. High levels of domoic acid in
the sardines may have worsened the effects of oxygen
loss in the water as the fish crowded into a limited
space. Or the domoic acid may help explain why they
entered the marina. Professor Caron said research
shows that domoic acid poisoning can cause abnormal
swimming in some kinds of fish.Harmful algae blooms
are a common cause of fish kills. Domoic acid can
also cause neurological disorders and death in
animals that eat fish poisoned with the neurotoxin.
For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. If you
ever miss one of our programs,go to
voaspecialenglish.com to find transcripts and MP3s
of all of our reports.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
