In August and September 2011, flooding from Hurricane Irene drove the dissolved oxygen levels in the waters of the Roanoke River down to zero for 20 days, causing extensive fish kills. Biologist Jeremy McCargo of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission said some of the other rivers that dump into the Albemarle Sound fared better.
“The Roanoke and Cashie rivers saw the worst of the fish kills from Irene,” he said. “We were finding bluegill sunfish and largemouth bass, but their numbers paled in comparison to what we saw in previous years. It’s hard to put a percentage on it, but the fishing will probably be down by 75 percent. Anglers will have to work harder, but there are some nice fish in the rivers. Surprisingly, we saw lots of shellcrackers, so they must have been better able to survive.”
The Commission jump-started the repopulation in the system in May 2012 by stocking 40,000 bluegill and 120,000 bass fingerlings from the Edenton National Fish Hatchery. In some creeks, bass fingerlings were spotted that were spawned by wild stock.
“We learned a lot after Hurricane Isabel in 2003, when there were nine days of no oxygen in the lower river,” McCargo said. “It was 20 days with no oxygen after Irene, and it took about three years before we got the bluegill and bass populations back to where they were. These fish populations can recover on their own natural dynamic systems. We found that we didn’t really need to stock after Isabel, and we just happened to be able to stock some bass following Irene.”
Outside the Roanoke system, fish populations are strong. In the lower Chowan, numbers are good, but the upper Chowan suffered some fish loss. There were no adverse effects in other Albemarle Sound rivers, so fish populations are similar to past years.
Be the first to comment