An estimated 40,000 tons of salmon, 8,000 tons of sardines, and masses of dead whales have washed up on the beaches across Chile in recent months.
The mass creature deaths are thought to be as a result of the El Niño that arrived at the beginning of 2016, which authorities say have choked the sea life to death.
Telesurtv.net reports:
That is about 12 percent of annual salmon production in Chile, the world’s second-biggest producer of the fish after Norway.
This month, some 8,000 tons of sardines were washed up at the mouth of the Queule River. And thousands of dead clams piled up on the coast of Chiloe Island.
On the shores of Santa Maria Island off the center off Chile’s long coast, cuttlefish have been washed up dead in the thousands.
Scientists largely blame the anomalies on El Niño, a disruptive weather phenomenon that comes with warming sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific.
Chiles has 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) of Pacific coastline making it highly vulnerable to El Niño.