This is the second in a series of post about “The Fish Kill of 2009”.

I called Island Manager Kim Knight this morning at 7:42 a.m. when I saw that the impoundment was dramatically lower than normal.  Kim was already aware of the situation.

In fact, the staff had intentionally lowered the level of the impoundment overnight because the level of dissolved oxygen in the water was critically low.  The water also had a high level of salinity.  The staff was hoping to flush the impoundment by getting the oxygen-depleted water out and new oxygen-rich ocean water in.  The process takes at least 12 hours because of the way the rice trunk works with the tides.  They chose to lower the water level over night so as to not compound the situation with day-time evaporation.

Low tide in Dewees Inlet was at 7:08 a.m. this morning.

The next high tide was predicted to be at 5.33 feet at 1:39 p.m.

Since the water on the inside of the impoundment was higher than on the outside, water was still going out.  At roughly, 10:30 a.m. the water levels would be even.

The staff started working on getting additional water and oxygen into the impoundment first thing after getting off the ferry.  For example, they got the aerator in the Chapel Pond working (I’m not sure why it wasn’t working).  They used mud pumps on the crabbing dock and on the Moser’s impoundment-side dock to pump water out of the impoundment and right back into it.  The hope was that the mixing action would cause oxygen to go into the water.  They tried using the old fire truck pump — that was unsuccessful because the dry hydrant they attached to was partially sticking out of the water.  They tried to change the rice trunk settings to stop more water from going out.  The water pressure was too great.  They had to wait until the tide rose enough to release the pressure.

Here is a picture of the staff hard at work.