Double Island Point sees mass fish death | Video

The death of ‘thousands’ of fish found at Double Island Point overnight has raised the alarm about a potential danger lurking in the water. Watch the video:

A local fisherman from Teewah was shocked to see a mass fish kill at the Double Island Point lagoon in the early hours of Tuesday morning (September 21).

Craig Thorne told The Gympie Times there were “thousands” of mostly-dead fish, with some still fighting for life in the sand.

He sprung into action, collecting those that were still alive in a bucket and returning them to the ocean at 2am.

“I’ve seen dead fish on the beach before but it’s generally bycatch that been washed up from a trawler and that was my initial thought … and then I had a close look and saw the algae,” he said.

Dead fish found at the Double Island Point lagoon.

The layer of slimy, potent algae that was covering parts of the sand was over an inch thick according to Mr Thorne, who suspected it was likely the cause of the deaths.

“It’s just devastating, it’s just killed everything,” he said.

“I think it's some sort of algae bloom that’s depleting the oxygen … (the fish are) slowly suffocating.

“I’d say it’s pulling the oxygen out of the water and coating the gills of the fish making it harder for them to breathe.”

The thick algae covering parts of Double Island Point that Mr Thorne believes is the cause of the mass killing.

Mr Thorne takes regular trips up the beach to go fishing and said he has never seen so many fish dead at Double Island.

“It is sad, especially for someone like me that regularly goes up there,” he said.

Speculation online that the fish died after the tide went and were simply caught in the lagoon was dismissed by Mr Thorne as “uneducated”.

The fish that Mr Thorne was trying to save by carting them back to the ocean.

“The tide has been coming in and out of there for as long as we’ve been around,” he said.

“We went up there and visited my friends at low tide in the afternoon and it wasn’t like that, it happened quickly.”

The Department of Environment Science was contacted but did not respond by deadline.