Did 25 Falmouth Fish Eat Themselves To Death? Maybe, Expert Says

FALMOUTH, MA — Two dozen dead striped bass were found in a Falmouth estuary recently, sparking a brief investigation from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries that didn't cause concern, but did conclude with something officials hadn't seen before.

The fact that 25 striped bass were found dead in Great Pond isn't something that worries Division of Marine Fisheries Deputy Director Mike Armstrong — "we're in the business of dead fish" — but the way he believes they died is something unique.

When officials go to a scene to search for a cause of death for fish, they typically look for signs of damage related to catch and release from recreational anglers or dumping from commercial fishing.

Neither was present at Great Pond, Armstrong said. What he did see was 25 striped bass stuffed to the gills — literally — with cinder worms.

"The ones we examined were just chock-full of them," Armstrong said.

Essentially, Armstrong explained, striped bass love to feed on the spawns of cinder worms. Cinder worms are about 1 to 3 inches in size and, in the spring in the northeast, their spawning cycles create a mass of what essentially becomes food for bass.

"This spawning activity happens all over the place in salt ponds and other places," Armstrong said.

As Armstrong puts it, bass go crazy for cinder worms. In Great Pond, Armstrong's tentative analysis is that the bass were swimming through the spawn and consuming so much of it that it's likely their gills became clogged, eventually killing the fish.

"I’ve never seen that happen before, but the evidence seems to point to that," Armstrong said. "It was almost a freak occurrence."

Falmouth's news alert regarding the situation left a lot of room for questions, but Armstrong said this is simply a natural but unique, if not a little strange, fish death.

Did the fish eat themselves to death? Well, sort of. As for how something like this could happen?

"Fish aren’t that bright," Armstrong said.