DFO investigating after almost 100 dead eels found floating in Dartmouth lakes

Eel enigma: Why are they dying? A mystery is playing-out in Dartmouth's lakes where dozens of dead eels have been found floating in the water.

Marine biologist Christine Ward-Paige is on a mission to find out why dozens of dead American eels are now floating in several Dartmouth lakes.

Her first sighting of the eels was at the Shubenacadie Canal last week, in part of the canal system towards Lake Micmac.

“As soon as we got down there we counted 36 in a very short, 10 metre stretch,” she says.

Lake Banook is the second spot where she spotted more dead eels in the water. Between the two lakes, Ward-Paige has counted 72 eel carcasses. Some of the larger eels were missing their heads.

After she posted photos of the dead eels online, other people got in touch with her reporting similar sightings.”

“Lake Thomas, Miller lake, Fletcher's lake, all the way up to Shubenacadie Grand Lake, that's where they've been reported so far,” she explains.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) considers the American eel a threatened species.

While Ward-Paige doesn't know why they're dying, she says it’s important to find out.

Area residents like Linda Young, who's seen the dead eels herself, agrees.

“Because I think the health of these lakes is critical for the residents of the area and for the environment as a whole,” says Young.

“It could be viruses, temperature, so many different things that it could be, but right now we understand that there's a problem, and right now we want to have answers to it.”

Occurrences such as dead eels fall under the jurisdiction of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

In an email late Friday afternoon, DFO told CTV it was aware of the “mortality event.”

“Fishery officers inspected the sites where mortalities were reported and found almost 100 dead eels of varying ages and stages of decomposition,” wrote department spokesperson Lauren Sankey.

Sankey noted fishery officers didn’t see any active work in the area, nor did they observe visible signs of water contamination, but they did collect samples of both the eels and the water for further analysis.

“It should be noted that mortality can be the result of a variety of natural events or causes,” the email continued.

In the meantime, Ward-Paige is helping collect information on sightings of dead eels using an app she herself created several years ago.

eOceans allows citizen scientists around the world to upload data and report sightings. The app geotags the information and can organize it in specific ways, a unique and easily-accessible way to crowdsource information.

“And then, we pass (that data) off to local experts and species experts, so that they can do their job, with the knowledge that they have,” she explains.

She encourages residents will use the eOceans app to record any further sightings of dead eels in the hopes of collecting data the DFO could potential use to try to determine the cause.

For more Nova Scotia news visit our dedicated provincial page.