Possible spill causes fish die-off?

Perhaps something like this will be posted soon

I paddled out on my longboard this morning to troll some moose oamas.  20 yds from the beach on Oahu’s Eastside, I ran into a brownish-orange foam in the scum line.  That’s never a good sign.  Trying hard not to get water in my eyes or mouth, I paddled through it and reached the break, where the water was less murky.  My 6 inch oama went untouched after 20 mins so I put on a smaller, more bite-sized one and that went untouched also.  This spot has produced all summer so it was very unusual to have such a quiet morning.  Even if the papio were absent I would’ve expected to be pestered by the aha and kaku.

After an hour and half of paddling around in the chop I gave up and headed back in through the slightly scummy water.  I was resigned to the fact that the epic oama season finally ended.  After all, it is November.  A spear fisherman met me at the showers and before I could remark about the brownish-orange foam, he said that the inner reef was full of dead fish.  He noticed the foam also and said there were a lot of 4 inch papio and other reef fish lying on the ocean bottom, but saw  some life past the breakers.

I was glad to have an excuse for not getting any hits but was concerned that we had been exposed to whatever killed the fish. He soaped up at the beach shower and I headed home to do the same.   I also did a nasal rinse to flush out any bugs that might’ve made their way up my nose, and emailed my NOAA and DAR friends to find out how to report this disaster.  Turns out that the national Coast Guard has a Spill Response Center you can call at 1-800-424-8802. I made my report and was later contacted by the local Coast Guard for more details.  DAR will probably verify the extent of the fish die-off.

I wasted 5 precious oamas today (3 released before I knew how unsafe the waters were), and have a slight pain in my left ear.  Hopefully tomorrow brings resolution to the spill and health to all who were in that water today.

Update:

11/5/2014 – I went back to the beach the next day to see if the brownish-orange foam was still present.  The water had cleared and there were no dead fish on shore.  The Coast Guard had done their check that morning also and hadn’t noticed what we experienced the day before.  I did hear that some dead, baby menpachi and aweoweo were seen about a half mile west of this spot, and small flounder and a small kaku were found dead a half a mile east of this spot.

These fish deaths were witnessed the evening I had encountered the strange foam.  A number of local agencies were notified and some suspect the cause of the foam and fish deaths was a bacteria or plankton bloom, similar to a “red tide”.