The Fish Apocalypse

Today when I got up and went into the galley, I thought I smelled fish a little bit.  I cleaned the sink thinking that maybe yesterday when I scraped the bottom of the Dinghy, maybe carried a barnacle in to the sink when I washed my hands.  Nope, Couldn't find anything.

I then grabbed my stuff and headed out to the office and when I came out of the boat, I was shocked.  The entire surface of the water was covered solid with dead minnows.  They were all about 1-2 inches long and seriously were almost solid.  In every square yard, there were maybe a few inches of water showing.

I have noticed that there are a lot of these minnows swimming just below the surface all the time and yesterday we were at Waterford Harbor and I noticed they also had a lot fate little guys swimming below the surface.
So this morning when I saw these dead fish, I went and looked in the channel, PortoFino marina, StarFleet Marina and South Shore Harbor.  None of them were covered in dead fish, so I figured may there was something wrong at the Marina like a stray current in the water but that didn't seem to be the case either.

I talked to a few folks today who have seen this in the past, when there is an overpopulation of these things and they all grow and start absorbing more oxegyn out of the water, they essentially all go lethargic and float to the top and then die.

Really odd stuff.  So today when I got home from work the smell is getting bad now.  They have been sitting in the sun all day, so starting to get fragrant.
I put the boat in gear and throttled up against the dock lines to create some current and moved a few hundred thousand of these little guys, however it was just not enough thrust to push them the 250 yards to the channel entrance.  I was able to get them moving about 75-100 yards, but that is it.

The guys that work at the BoardWalk Beast and Boardwalk Shuttle (Boats that dock next to me) said that if they haven't workd their way out of the Marina in the morning, they are going to attempt to net them and haul them somewhere.

This does go on record as the strangest thing I have seen related to the water so far.