Some sad news developing down here. A neighbor reported a large fish kill in the Pelican /McNeil system that feeds into the lower San Bernard River. Right now, the shallow lakes are covered over with dead Menhadden (Shad) and green mullet in numbers are on top - lethargic and gilling - not dead yet, but most probably will be soon.

As you may or may not know, we are on the Texas Stream Team and we test the river once a month for Dissolved Oxygen, PH, temperature and Salinity. On our last test, Monday of this week, we recorded the lowest Dissolved oxygen and salinity since we have been testing for almost 2 years. This can be attributed to the flood from the rains the first of the month. Last week there was also a fish kill in Buffalo Camp Bayou attributed to low Dissolved oxygen.
Looks like the flood waters are continuing to take their toll.
With the flood waters, nutrients of all kinds and rotting organic matter wash into the river- causing an algal bloom which uses up the oxygen in the water. We think that is what has happened. We'll keep on the look out down here. Has anybody else seen any evidence of stressed fish up and down the river?

Not really seen anything up this way. I seen a small school of something moving right by my dock
but didn't pay any attention to it. Also pretty sure I seen mullet jumping this morning.
Will keep my eye open.
Thanks for the info.

Holeman

Jan, we have not seen anything up here just north of the railroad bridge. Bill and I do our water quality test around the end of each month so we haven't tested for July as yet. Will keep a watch out.
Jackie

Thanks. We have not seen anything bigger down here - but there is a lot of bait fish in the river and they are coming to the surface a lot. They seem to be stressed. We'll let you know if anything else is observed down here. Hopefully we are out of the woods.

We ran to the mouth of the river Saturday night right at sundown. I saw a lot of bait moving (more than usual) from just below the Sportsman's Bridge down to the old cut. There was almost nothing moving at my house below the 521 Bridge under the lights. Not even any gar which we have seen plenty of this year. How long does it take the river to completely flush itself at the non-flood stage?

I hope things improve. Please keep us posted.

Nada Mejor

The low dissolved Oxygen - and other associated woes with water quality - always happen in any river after a flood following a period of no run-off. What happens is all kinds of organic material from decaying plants to animal waste as well as fertilizer from fields and any other thing on the ground that gets washed into the river. Then the sun comes out and the little plankton and other "bugs" in the river get happy and eat up all the nutrients causing a bloom - which uses up the dissolved oxygen in the water body. (this process is what causes dead zones at the ends of rivers like the Mississippi) We really have not had a lot of run off in the Bernard watershed for about a year now - and we had a lot of run off after this flood event. Last time a similar event happend on the Bernard several years ago we even had an episode of Black water - where the river turns black from all the decaying matter in it. We think we may have missed that bullet this time - we have had a flow into the Gulf. As a matter of fact, we had dolphins in the river down here yesterday and last night there was rafts and rafts of Sargasso weed going upriver - that's something we have not seen before. Keep your fingers crossed - maybe the worst has already happened.

Thanks for the update and interesting bit of knowl;edge. If you dry that there sour gas weed, can you......never mind.