Hundreds of fish found dead in Kansas ponds, biologist says algae is the reason

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — A day after the Kansas Department of Health and Environment issued a public health advisory for blue-green algae in Kansas lakes, a fisherman found hundreds of dead fish in Clearwater’s Chisholm Ridge ponds.

He said what he found surprised him.

“I was kind of in shock,” Ryder Frickey said. “It started out by I just saw one, and I looked more down the bank, and I just saw hundreds of them. Didn’t really know what to say or do.”

According to the KDHE, blooms of blue-green algae can impact how much oxygen is in the water, and low oxygen can result in fish mortality.

Walter Dodds, a professor of biology at Kansas State, said warm temperatures also help blue-green algae grow and spread.

“So, it’s just kind of a one-two whammy of making the algae grow more, but there’s less oxygen in the water,” Dodds said.

This is not uncommon. Dodds said several lakes in Kansas have routine blooms.

Although the cause of the spread is unclear, Dodds speculates that fertilizer runoff could be a factor, which helps algae grow.

“We did get those spring rains, pretty hard spring rains,” Dodds said. “And so, it’s possible that people fertilized and then just shot it all in there and just dumped a whole bunch of fertilizer into the system.”

Clearwater is cleaning up the fish in both ponds on Tuesday, but, for now, there is not much to do other than let the algae take its course and wait a couple of weeks.