MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chilean experts investigate death of millions of dead prawns washed to the coast

“Red spots” cover the beaches in an area surrounding power plants

Chilean experts and prosecutors are investigating the appearance of millions of dead prawns that washed up on a beach in southern Chile this week carpeting a three-kilometre strand in red.

The fishermen in the Coronel area, some 500 kilometres south of Santiago, began noticing something out of the ordinary at the beginning of the week. There were giant “red spots” appearing just off the shore, fishermen union president Juan Gutierrez told the local press.

By Tuesday, the red mass had moved to land: “Millions of prawns were stranded on the beach,” Gutierrez said, shocked. “I've been a fisherman 39 years and have never seen anything like it before,” he said.

Gutierrez added that he's seen more prawns clumping near the shoreline, indicating another mass stranding could happen.

As residents removed the thick red spread of prawns, each a centimetre or smaller, civil police and environmental experts have arrived to take samples and investigate the cause of this unusual phenomenon.

They will be looking to see “whether there was any trace or element” in the shrimp that would explain why they stranded en masse indicated the Deputy Commissioner of the Environmental Crime Investigation Brigade and Cultural Heritage (Bridema), Víctor Casanova.

“We are working to determine conditions in the Coronel Bay, including temperature, electrical conductivity, and, especially, oxygen” investigator Casanova told local media.

The local fishermen ruled out that the causes of the stranding are related to El Niño phenomenon. Instead, they suspect that the death of the crustaceans was due to the effects of the operation of power plants, since they use seawater as a coolant.

The results of the investigation are expected within 30 days in order to elucidate the causes of the prawn stranding.