Flooding to blame for fish deaths near Wesley Seale Dam

CORPUS CHRISTI — An unusual scene when several dozen alligator gar were found trapped in fence links near the Wesley E. Seale Dam.

A KRIS 6 viewer shared the photo with us so we went to check it out for ourselves.

Texas Parks and Wildlife says this all happened because of the recent flooding along the Nueces River. If you look along the fence, you can see the water rose over 4 feet.

John Findeison, fisheries biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Inland Fisheries Corpus Christi District, said “What we saw today was a higher stream flow than normal and that river flow coming down from the Dam release has created a current. All gar species — alligator gar, spotted gar and long nose gar — responded to it by swimming upstream and then becoming entangled to the fence.”

Over several dozen of these different types of alligator gar, ranging in sizes from 1-3 feet long.

Findeison says he hasn’t seen this before but given the recent weather, he’s not all that surprised.

Texas Parks and Wildlife records fish-kills like this but say, the Nueces River is filled with thousands upon thousands of alligator gar species and they don’t for see this hurting the local ecosystem.

Findeison said, “It’s an unfortunate event for those individual gar that did get trapped but it doesn’t hurt the population, it’s not going to be detrimental to any of that.”

As for all those unlucky alligator gar, Texas Parks and Wildlife doesn’t plan to remove them but will let mother nature take its course.

Source: KRISTV