Monitoring of Calajunan creek, affected areas recommended
The City Agriculture Office (CAO) has strongly recommended for a regular monitoring of seepages coming from the Calajunan creek as it could be one of the factors that caused Saturday's fish kill in Iloilo River. As this developed, the CAO attributed the fish kill to "aquatic stratification."
A report submitted by CAO chief Jose Gil Parreñas said, "emphasis is necessary for the regular monitoring of the seepages that mixed up with the water flowing towards the Calajunan Creek as this tributary is directly above the area that was greatly affected."
In earlier interview, Mayor Jerry Treñas ruled out the possibility that a seepage from the Calajunan dumpsite which passes through the Calajunan creek could be the reason behind the fish kill. The mayor, however, was not yet equipped with Parreñas's report during the interview.
The affected areas was recorded from Barangay Sooc, Arevalo to Mandurriao along B. Aquino Bridge until Jalandoni and Forbes Bridges. Both the fishermen and nearby residents were greeted Saturday morning with dead gobies, eels, tarpons, crabs, shrimps, catfishes and tilapia. Before these fishes and crustaceans were seen floating in the river, they showed common signs of surfacing and gasping behavior.
Romulo Pangantihon, CAO's agricultural technologist, said surfacing and gasping indicates "respiratory difficulty as caused by scarce supply of dissolved oxygen." The low dissolved oxygen maybe caused by physical imbalance in the aquatic environment.
The report further said the aquatic stratification is caused by varied component that is physically carried by flood waters as well as chemical elements from dumps and decompositions will greatly influence the sudden alteration of normal aquatic environment causing major mortalities in its aquatic population.
However, the same report ruled out "chemical poisoning" in the fish kill. It said, chemical poisoning causes a sudden death to the affected animal exhibiting a very much different behavior by a quick swift swimming motion and disoriented circling movement prior to its sudden death.