Bunker kills

[hammer4reel]

Been a Lot of bunker dying up in the river .
Weird to see this happening when water is still so cold

Sad to see and unusual like you said this time of year. If you don't mind me asking, where is that?

[NoLimit]

Did they get caught in the moon low tide?

[AndyS]

Full moon blow out tide ?? What I do not get when I see these photos is where are all the birds ?? I will watch 2 seagulls practically kill each other for some Burger King scraps in some bag at the Shop-Rite parking lot, but give them millions of fresh dead fish, not a bird to be seen, why is that !!!

[hammer4reel]

Shrewsbury

[MDeSi]

Didn’t see as many but had some wash up back in red bank.

[MattMal88]

Originally Posted by AndyS

Full moon blow out tide ?? What I do not get when I see these photos is where are all the birds ?? I will watch 2 seagulls practically kill each other for some Burger King scraps in some bag at the Shop-Rite parking lot, but give them millions of fresh dead fish, not a bird to be seen, why is that !!!

Its funny that you say that because I remember fishing shark river inlet 3-4 years ago and there was a huge bunker kill in the river. Millions were washing out of the inlet and I thought the same thing. There were no birds eating them at all. A nice blitz of large blues eventually came in and got on them but even that only lasted maybe an hour. But the entire outgoing tide had millions of dead or almost dead bunker washing out into the ocean. That was a full moon blowout tide when that happened.

[Gumada]

The birds are just plain full, can’t eat another bite....maybe

[togzilla]

https://www.nj.com/monmouth/2019/03/...r-weekend.html

Saw this article in NJ.com that blames the issue on predatory fish like bluefish and stripers chasing the bunker into shallow ares where they exhaust all of the oxygen and die off. I could buy that story if it was May and there were a lot of stripers and bluefish around but not this time of year. Somethings fishy here!

[Billfish715]

Togzilla, You read the article correctly. The only problem is that the reporter
( Jeff Goldman ) misreported the statement by Larry Hajna from the DEP. He said that predatory fish sometimes chase baitfish into the shallows. The reporter failed to mention the word "sometimes". His report made it sound like a fact. Nowhere in the DEP statement did it mention anything about why the bunker were in the shallow water. It is an example of poor journalism. The absence of one word turns this into fake news and causes people to wonder and have doubts.

As for the cleanup........have you seen how fat the Sandy Hook seals have become?