We just recieved this update from St. Bernard Parish officials.Large fish kill found at the mouth of the MRGOSuspected emulsified oil/tar balls being recovered in the area of Grassy Island A large fish kill was found Sunday afternoon at the mouth of the MRGO. Thousands of dead fish were found floating at the top of the water, collected in pockets in boom that was deployed in the area, and washed up on the shoreline. “By our estimates there were thousands, and I’m talking about 5,000 to 15,000 dead fish. Different species were found dead including crabs, sting rays, eel, drum, speckled trout, red fish, you name it, included in that kill,” St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro said Monday morning. “There is what we believe to be some recoverable oil in the area as well. We will be sampling that and recovering what we can. We don’t want to jump to any conclusions because we’ve had some oxygen issues by the Bayou La Loutre Dam from time to time. The Marine Division of Wildlife and Fisheries is on it this morning, and we’ll be looking for some preliminary or hard line information by the end of the day. It does point to the need for us to continue to monitor our waters and that’s what we’ll be doing.” A half mile long orange thick substance with several tar balls and a strong diesel smell was located this morning around Grassy Island. Skimming Task Force 7 is on scene and is recovering this product. SCAT Team Houma and Operations at the St. Bernard Branch have devised a system to collect boom that has been stranded in the marsh. The Marsh Flusher is a system currently in use in St. Bernard Parish waters, which reaches into oiled marsh areas and flushes them with clean water. It uses an articulating arm to do this. A grapple has now been attached to this arm, which is now being used in marsh areas as a boom retrieval system. This will assist in limiting human impact in these sensitive areas. There are two systems currently in use, both of which can retrieve 2,000 to 4,000 feet of stranded boom per day.
