Sawfish dying at an alarming rate – is it something in the water?

Many different marine species, like the smalltooth sawfish, have been dying on the coast of Florida in alarming numbers.

The smalltooth sawfish is an endangered marine animal so rare that Joyce Milelli, a paddle board guide in the Florida Keys, had to take a picture.

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“I’m seeing just the back half of the body. I could tell it was a very large sawfish,” said Milelli.

She could tell something was wrong with the 11-foot ray halfway in the shallow mangroves.

“I thought it might be dying or dead at that point because it wasn’t moving when we moved around it,” Milelli said. “I gently touched its tail, and it just barely flinched, so I knew it was alive.”

Five days later, the rare species reappeared in the same spot, and Milelli’s coworker Cody, took a video.

“When Cody saw him, he was nearly high and dry with a falling tide, and it was clear he wouldn’t be able to get out of there, and he saw him thrashing around. He saw him roll. He heard him gasping. It was awful,” said Milelli.

They called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, but just a couple of hours later, the sawfish was dead.

“What I know now is once they do that, there’s a reason,” said Milelli.

Milelli is also aware this is just one example in a series of mysterious smalltooth sawfish deaths. As of Sunday, 17 have been found dead in the last two months.

“Typically, we only see four or five a year for the whole state,” said Mike Parsons, a professor of marine science in the Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Parsons is joining the fight to figure out what’s going on.

“The fact that so many different fishes are being affected suggests it might be something in the water,” said Parsons.

Sting rays, which are related to the smalltooth sawfish, have been spotted swimming upside down. Some sharks, mullets and snapper are just some of the more than 15 species that have been reported to FWC as acting strange.

But, the question officials want answers to is why them?

“All the obvious [reasons], you know, we pretty much eliminated,” said Parsons.

It’s not red tide. Oxygen and salinity levels look good, and it’s not a parasite. Teams across the country are keeping their minds open but have noticed a heightened level of the single-cell algae known as gambierdiscus. It’s what causes ciguatera poisoning.

“That typically lives on the bottom. It lives on sea grasses and seaweeds, and we were seeing it in the water and saw it in some of the stomachs of mullet,” said Parsons.

Parsons explained it’s the highest level he’s seen in 15 years, but it typically affects people. He hasn’t seen the effects on marine animals in the wild.

“We had a really hot summer. We have a wet winter right now. We have pretty steady winds from the East-northeast, coming in, at least down in the Keys,” said Parsons. “So are the conditions just right, and it’s a one-in-a-million shot?”

Or are all these animals a canary in the coal mine signaling us there’s a great problem in the water?