‘It might mean not eating those fish’: Dead fish found at Medi Park

Published: Jul. 3, 2022 at 2:51 PM CDT

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - If you spent your 4th of July holiday weekend at Medi Park, you may have been welcomed with an unusual sight.

Sunday morning, Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens and other staff received calls of dead fish at Medi Park.

When staff arrived the fish did not look to be actively dying or in distress, meaning this probably occurred overnight.

Staff believes this incident was due to low oxygen levels.

“I took some dissolved oxygen measurements, it ranged across the pond, but where the bulk of where the dead fish were found, I was getting measurements that were 2.25 to 2.5 Mg per liter,” said Caleb Huber, fisheries biologist, Texas Parks and Wildlife.

To put that into perspective, Huber says once levels go below 3.5 to 3.0, you can start to have some fish deaths.

On the south side where water is pushed in, levels were 0.5 or lower.

“The most likely scenario that happened is the south end is pretty shallow and is prone to have low dissolve oxygen anyways, we got that little bit of rain last night and it was just enough rain to push that oxygen out into the rest of the pond and we had a low oxygen event,” said Huber.

Moving forward Texas Parks and Wildlife will be keeping tabs, going out every couple of days.

“Assuming everything and those oxygen levels get back where we want them we’ll continue on with those fish stockings as normal, here in two weeks will be the next one and if things don’t improve we’ll just have to adjust as we have to,” said Huber.

He says there is nothing to indicate there is contamination or a problem with the fish however he urges anyone who may have caught fish to be cautious.

“Use their best judgment and error on the side of caution and in this instance it might mean not eating those fish until we have a couple of days to see how things go,” said Huber.

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