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The Sea looked good when I visited the last 2 years. No smell, not many dead fish, water was super clear(for the Sea), maybe 90 degrees, plenty of folks catching lots of fish, and loads of birds. The tilapia die because of low oxygen levels. When the waters hot after an algae bloom the algae decays and removes much of the O2 from the water. This kills the fish; not disease or toxins. Tilapia reproduce so fast and the Sea is so fertile that even after a huge fish kill there are plenty of fish or there soon will be. There are whole beaches made up of fish bones several feet deep.
Yep, sadly the big vinas are gone. The first 1 I caught there was 22lbs. All the ocean fish are gone; vina, sargo, gulf croaker, mud suckers, and mullet. The tilapia stay around because no matter how bad the sea gets there is always a population of the them in the New and Alamo rivers as well as all the creeks and drainage ditches that lead in to the Sea. If every tilapia in the Sea died then we had a wet year and the water improved a bit the fish would recolonize and completely repopulate the sea in just a few years. The last fish and game estimate I heard for the sea was 35 million tilapia. Just some info. The sea is always fluctuating. Mike
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