ISLAMORADA, Fla. – The death toll of the critically endangered smalltooth sawfish continues to climb in the Florida Keys.
“It had come up to the shallows and this one was pretty large,” said resident Andi Thomas.
Over the weekend, she witnessed another sawfish beaching itself off Islamorada as she drove by on the Overseas Highway near mile marker 74.
“I just lost all emotion and was like this is absolute insanity… there is something in the water,” she said. “It’s like we’re watching the ocean fall apart right in front of us rapidly.”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission updated its weekly reporting of the numbers on Wednesday morning, with 38 smalltooth sawfish now reported dead since January.
That number has risen by at least six over the past week. More than 150 others have been observed in crisis.
This past Sunday, Gil McCrae, FWC’s director of the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, appeared on Local 10′s “This Week in South Florida.”
That’s where he described the unprecedented emergency response launched by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to try and save at-risk sawfish.
“We have put together a team to rescue and potentially rehab sawfish that are in distress,” McCrae said. “Keep in mind this has never been done before.”
McCrae explained that the historic effort comes with a unique set of challenges.
“It’s a very tricky thing to find a sawfish that is healthy enough, given the distress we’ve seen them in, to survive the transport to a marine facility for a potential rehab,” he said.
The sawfish that beached itself in Key West last week was not strong enough to save, and it died, but one found in a canal in Cudjoe Key on Saturday was successfully rescued.
“So the one that was caught yesterday is the first one you were able to catch?” Local 10 Environmental Advocate and anchor Louis Aguirre asked McCrae.
“I believe it is, yes,” McCrae answered.
The Don’t Trash Our Treasure team reached out to NOAA and the Mote Marine Laboratory to find out what happened to this sawfish, but they have not responded as this story’s publishing.
Dean Grubbs, a researcher and sawfish expert with Florida State University, is also on the case.
“It just doesn’t seem to be letting up,” said Grubbs. “And we still don’t know what the cause is.”
Since Friday, Grubbs has been back in the Keys with his team to try to help solve this marine mystery.
“One of our big goals is to provide samples from healthy sawfish that the pathologist and toxicologist can then compare to samples that are collected from the distressed sawfish as well as the dead sawfish,” he explained.
Grubbs reports that his team was able to catch, sample, and release one healthy female who measured just over 11 feet long, and two healthy males who measured nearly 13 feet long.
“They’re big animals… they’re super strong… they’re way quicker than you might think they are,” he detailed. “And then they’ve got this toothed rostrum, you know, this weapon on the end of their head that they can swing with incredible speed.”
It’s dangerous, but critical work.
“You know we can’t fix it until we find out what’s causing it, for sure,” Grubbs said. “And then we can backtrack and figure out ways that we can prevent it from happening in the future.”
More than 70 other marine species have also been documented spinning and swimming erratically from Key West to Palm Beach. Some fish have even turned up dead.
FWC created a detailed map showing reported fish kills in March. Some of the fish included are related to the spinning event, and some are not.
But the sawfish has suffered the most mortalities.
“They’re fish eaters, and so if it is something that neurotoxin that accumulates up in the food chain, and they’re eating the fish that are affected by this, then it could (have) potentially accumulated in them more than others,” Grubbs explained.
Elevated levels of gambierdiscus – a benthic microalgae – have been detected in water samples taken so far. Toxins have also been found in the flesh of necropsied fish, but scientists believe it’s too soon to draw any conclusions.
“You have to realize that there are multiple algal species that produce toxins and multiple toxins,” McCrae underscored. “So we have this matrix of multiple species and multiple toxins.”
The research continues with urgency, as there is so much at stake.
“If we find out the cause is because of something that we’re doing to the environment, is should be a wakeup call for everybody,” Grubbs reflected. “That we need to change what we’re doing, and try to repair this environment that we’ve definitely damaged before it’s irreversible.”
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Report sightings of healthy, sick, injured or dead sawfish to FWC’s Sawfish Hotline. Include date, time and location of the encounter, estimated length, water depth and any other relevant details.
- 1-844-4SAWFISH (1-844-472-9347)
Report sightings of abnormal fish behavior, fish disease, or fish kills to FWC’s Fish Kill Hotline.
- Submit a fish kill report
- Call 800-636-0511