Anchovy die-off at Santa Cruz Harbor has ‘all hands on deck’ 

Notice something different in the air recently? That’s the smell of an anchovy die-off – when a mass of anchovies in close quarters consume so much oxygen the levels become too low. 

Since it began Friday in the Santa Cruz Harbor, Senior Deputy Harbormaster John Haynes said staff has been “all hands on deck.” By the end of Tuesday, he thinks about 11,500 pounds of dead anchovies will have been removed from the water.

Haynes said this mass die-off is similar to one that happened in 2014, but not as severe. 

“I think that our efforts have been good,” he said. “I don’t think there’s much more anybody could have done at this point. Just sucks to have. We’ll be glad when the cleanup efforts are over. It’ll be about a month or so for the smell to escape.” 

Ten years ago, staff hauled 120 tons of dead anchovies to the dump. This time around, Haynes said the anchovies are being hauled to farms north of Santa Cruz to be used as fertilizer. The city’s harbor operation will have some costs – likely in the tens of thousands of dollars – due to staff working overtime and the use of hauling trucks. 

Haynes said the new arrangement to drop off the anchovies at farms is a “huge help to us” and a great alternative to taking them to the dump.  

He added that while it’s been a lot of work for the staff, they’ve kept all operations going. 

He said anchovies, as they do almost every year, came and went in high numbers from July until the past couple of weeks – when they appeared to be leaving. Then on Friday evening, harbor staff got a surprise. 

“All of a sudden, on Friday, a whole bunch of anchovies just showed up, kind of came from open water and congregated along the shores, and then started coming in the harbor,” Haynes said. “So we turned the aerators on as they were coming in. There were just too many fish, it overwhelmed the system. It ate up all the oxygen and they started dying Friday night, just as they were coming in.” 

On Friday evening, as the anchovies arrived, the harbor filled with pelicans, sea gulls and seals – creating a show for people walking to the lighthouse. 

“I don’t think it’s quite as bad as 2014 was in terms of the numbers of fish,” Haynes said, “but it definitely is a real similar type of incident where we had just huge schools of fish coming in that were dying almost immediately.” 

Haynes said Tuesday will likely be the last day that staff remove the fish, because after Day 5 of being dead in the water, the anchovies have started to disintegrate so much that they’re too soft and break up into small pieces that are hard to scoop up. 

“Today, we’ll probably be working longer and harder – this will be our last push today and then the rest will just have to decompose,” he said. “We’ll keep the aerators on to help with the decomposition process. But the efforts have been good, and we’ve been managing to pretty much get all the floating fish by the end of the day.” 

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