Not a Total Wash in the Harbor

After the massive die-off of sardines early in the week, news of tsunami surges hitting California this morning gave residents of King Harbor Marina serious pause.

“I woke up this morning and the song that was going through my head was, It’s The End of the World As We Know It,” said Bill Hutchinson while hauling a wheelbarrow of dead sardines toward the waiting bulldozers.

Hutchinson, an aerospace engineer, has lived in King Harbor aboard his boat for five years.

“It’s a beautiful place to live,” he said. “Kind of stinky today.”

In fact, it was stinky in plenty of places in Redondo, with residents saying they could whiff sardines at Prospect Avenue and Aviation Boulevard, about a mile inland, among other places.

For the smell, Hutchinson recommends Vicks VapoRub. “Now it smells like eucalyptus-smoked sardines,” he said.

City officials aren’t speculating on how quickly or slowly the stinky sardine smell will linger in the marina and beyond, especially on what should have been a perfect day to clean dead fish out of the water. But the current in and out the harbor caused by the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that hit Japan made conditions too dangerous for workers and volunteers to stand on the docks and net dead sardines for most of the day.

“We have a group of divers who were waiting all day to get in the water but there’s no way with fifteen mph surges,” said police Sgt. Phil Keenan. “Fifteen mile-per-hour surges and you’d be in the west end or the east end [of the harbor] in a second.”

After volunteers were sent home in the afternoon, public employees cleaned out fish from a calm corner of the marina’s east end while city officials looked forward to resuming an all-out cleanup effort on Saturday.

The surging water is expected to subside late tonight, said Fire Chief Dan Madrigal, whose Harbor Patrol division spent the day restricting boat access as well as escorting other boats into the harbor because of the rushing current, which broke apart part of Dock X at the marina.

Thousands of fish remain on the ocean floor after dying in the harbor from oxygen depletion Monday night. Workers have been using a combination of vacuums to blow and suck the underwater dead fish out.

Although no full-scale cleanup happened today, it wasn’t a total wash, Madrigal said.

“With the agitation of the water going and coming, it just broke everything loose, which brought [the fish] to the surface,” Madrigal said.

Asked how long the smell might linger, Madrigal wouldn’t speculate.

“It’s a matter of how much we get out and how much of the fish carcass is left after decaying,” he said. “We’ve got to do our best. There’s no chemicals we’re looking at to add. We’ve just got to allow the natural process to take place.”

It’s been a challenging week for city officials, who are coordinating the removal of millions of dead sardines as quickly as possible only to put all cleanup efforts on hold for a day because of the racing current.

“It’s all been significant for us,” Madrigal said. “First the fish kill... Then the tsunami completely confounded our efforts.”

Madrigal added, “We will be back at it tomorrow.”