Why have 53 tonnes of fish mysteriously died in a Mexican lagoon?

At least 48 tonnes of fish have turned up dead in a lagoon in western Mexico and authorities are investigating whether waste water treatment plants are to blame. On Monday, fishermen used shovels, wheel-carts and trucks to pull tonnes of dead fish out of the Cajititlan lagoon, which has been the scene of four fish kills this year. Authorities were investigating whether negligence at the treatment plants was to blame after millions of fresh water fish locally known as “popocha” began to float up last week.

We don’t want this problem to worsen because we would end up in the street.

Rigoberto Diaz, a local fisherman who fears that edible species of fish would begin dying too

Jalisco state Environment Secretary Magdalena Ruiz Mejia said this is the fourth unexplained fish kill at the same lagoon this year. Authorities are conducting tests on the dead fish while state environmental prosecutors are investigating the local waste water treatment plants. Ruiz Mejia had said Sunday that such deaths were “more and more” frequent due to “bad management of the body of water”. The Tlajomulco municipality, however, said the deaths were due to a cyclical change in water temperature that caused oxygen to drop.

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