Thousands of fish dead in Little River Canada: Climate change responsibe for millions of fish and sea bird deaths along east and west coast of North America

Photo (Dale Molnar/CBC) 

Thousands of American gizzard shad are floating belly up, dead, in Little River Canada, but the grave looking pool of dead fish is just another sign all is not well with American and Canadian water ways and the many species who inhabit these waters.

Apparently millions of these little fish are migrating too far north due to climate change and can't handle fluctuations in water temperature.

Typically, shad do not swim further north than New York, but in recent years, they have been swimming as far as Canada and quickly dying, according to the Essex Region Conservation Authority.

"We've seen it happen quite commonly over the last 15 years, every two years or so depending on the thaw," said Tim Byrne, ERCA's director of watershed management services.

The problem is shad are highly prone to thermal shock, which is a sudden change in water temperature that immediately kills schools of fish, reports CBC News.

Warmer waters are proving to be a menace for marine life and birds alike up and down North America especially along the western coast where a large area of warm water called “the blob” is sitting of the coast of Alaska and Canada killing tens of thousands of fish and sea birds.

In January on the east coast of Canada a marine mystery was confounding residents of southwest Nova Scotia who astonished to witness thousands of dead fish, starfish, crabs, clams, scallops and lobster wash up on the shore.

Residents of Plympton, a small community in Digby County, say they have been finding dead herring on the shore of St. Mary's Bay for more than a month, but recently all marine life started washing up dead.

Dead fish have also been found on the shores of the Annapolis Basin.

"We started finding starfish, crabs, and flounder.

We found ocean perch and then yesterday we started finding scallops on the beach and like I said everything's dead... we'd like to know what's going on," said Karl Cole.

Just last week Thousands of bees washed ashore in an area where last month 81 false killer whales died, in Florida. 
The bees where washing up at Lowdermilk Park Beach Naples in Florida.

Just last month 81 false killer whales died after stranding themselves off the South Florida coast.

NOAA initially reported that 95 false killer whales were stranded in South Florida.

Then on Monday afternoon, NOAA Fish Southeast tweeted that 81 whales had died and also said the whales were at a remote location off of Hog Key in the Everglades. 

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