Tons of fish killed by Rio pollution
Clean-up crews are scooping tons of dead fish from the surface of lake near Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
The fish died in Marapendi lagoon, which is stagnant and polluted by sewage from high-rise apartment buildings on Rio’s fashionable southwest side.
The dead fish were savelha, a coastal fish that grows up to 1 foot (30 centimeters) long and is highly sensitive to changes in its environment, said the Rio de Janeiro state Authority for Rivers and Lagoons, or Serla.
The clean-up began on Thursday when four tons of dead fish were removed and continued yesterday.
Serla officials said the water was not sufficiently renewed by contact with the ocean, which leads to high concentration of algae that reduce the oxygen level in the water.
Marapendi is near Rio’s upscale Barra da Tijuca district, which dumps untreated sewage into the lagoon.
Pollution also has depleted the fish population in another lagoon, near Rio’s trendy Ipanema beach. In 2000, a leaking sewer line killed an estimated 132 tons of fish in the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon, mainly gray mullets, snooks and porgies. The next year, some 30 tons of fish washed up in the lagoon, and a reported 17 tons in 2002.
