Watch: ‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before’: Thousands Of Fish Wash Up On Japan’s Shores For Unknown Reasons
Thousands of dead fish have washed up on Japan’s northern shore this December, for reasons that have not been understood.
Some 1,200 tonnes of sardines and mackerel washed up on the shores of Hakodate, on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido last week, effectively covering the shore in the silver scales of fish, a scene that looks dystopian.
On Wednesday, Nakiri, a town hundreds of miles south of Hokkaido faced 30 to 40 tonnes of scaled sardines, or sappa.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” a local seasoned fisher told Japanese newspaper, Mainichi Shimbun.
“It was only around last year that we began to catch sappa in Nakiri. It makes me wonder if the marine ecosystem is changing.”
No one has been able to confirm the cause as yet, and officials plan to test the waters in the hope of uncovering it.
UK tabloid The Daily Mail linked the phenomenon to the released treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which Japan called out as factually false.
That hasn’t stopped social media conspiracy theories from circulating.
Massive number of dead fish in Japan! 😱
If you think it’s because of Fukushima radioactive water, you would be dead wrong.
It’s because of… climate change!
— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) December 8, 2023
Takashi Fujioka, a Hakodate Fisheries Research Institute researcher, said he had heard of similar phenomena before, but it was his first time seeing it.
According to local researcher Takashi Fujioka, one possible explanation could be that the fish may have been chased by larger fish, become exhausted due to a lack of oxygen while moving in a densely packed school, and were washed up by the waves.
“The fish also may have suddenly entered cold waters during their migration, he said.
The decomposing fish could lower oxygen levels in the water and affect the marine environment,” Fujioka said.
“We don’t know for sure under what circumstances these fish were washed up, so I do not recommend” eating them, he said.
What do you think caused this scene?
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