Perth Voice Interactive

THOUSANDS of small dead fish have been found near Lake Monger, floating together in vast rafts of rotting flesh in the waterway between the lake and Mitchell Freeway.

The stench hung heavy in the air as another species — larger and darker — weaved through the corpses, competing with birds to nibble at the dead.

The dead fish are European carp so their demise goes unlamented for the most part, but their deaths could be a warning sign for other aquatic inhabitants.

A passer-by said she’d been walking the Lake Monger paths for years and had never seen anything like it. She’d spotted a duck swallowing one of the dead fish and had worried for the bird’s health.

Cambridge council has stuck up signs warning people of blue green algae in the area.

CEO Jason Buckley says the town’s monitoring the area and will continue removing dead fish till water quality improves.

Lake Monger’s long had water quality issues: PhD theses have been written on the myriad problems, from nuisance midges, algal blooms, historic botulism outbreaks and previous fish kills observed back in the ‘60s and ‘80s.

“While the management of the water quality at Lake Monger is an ongoing and complex process, the fish deaths seen by users of Lake Monger over the past week have been the result of an increase in nutrient levels in the water following early rainfall in the past fortnight leading to an increase in algae,” Mr Buckley says.

by DAVID BELL