PHOTOS: Even More Dead Fish Wash Ashore in Middletown

Middletown, NJ - First, it was the hundreds of thousands of dead fish that washed ashore in Keansburg last week, the start of a fish kill locals are saying has been one of the worst they can remember.

Then, Saturday night, a Patch reader sent us these photos of thousands more dead fish floating down Compton Creek in the Belford section of Middletown. Dead fish were found in the Keyport marina Friday night, and, as Patch reported Saturday, between 15,000 - 20,000 washed up in Little Egg Harbor over the weekend as well. Thousands of dead peanut bunker also floated into the Atlantic Highlands marina Sunday morning.

The DEP said the cause remains the same in all five incidents: Low oxygen levels in the water.

Bob Considine, a spokesman with the state Department of Environmental Protection, also said the unusually high numbers of dead fish washing up may be because there are simply more peanut bunker, or Atlantic menhaden, in Raritan Bay and the Atlantic Ocean this year.

"Our Bureau of Marine Fisheries estimates that the number of this bait fish has not been this high in more than a decade off the Atlantic coast," Considine told the Asbury Park Press. NY/NJ Baykeeper, an advocacy group that fights for clean ocean water, said that while fish kills are a mostly natural phenomenon, they can be worsened by pollution runoff, warm water temperatures and fertilizer and fecal bacteria in the water (there are high levels of human fecal bacteria in the Navesink.)

Regardless, locals from Keansburg to Atlantic Highlands are saying they've never seen a fish kill this bad before.

"I talked to my grandfather, who has been living along the creek for about 40 years, and he says he has never seen this before," said Belford resident Heather Riedel, who sent the photos to Patch. "It smells so bad, you have no idea."

Similarly, Blake Deakin, 34, who owns a sailboat and has lived in Atlantic Highlands for 30 years, told the Asbury Park Press he has never seen fish kills of this magnitude before.

All these photos are of dead peanut bunker that washed into Compton Creek Saturday night in Belford.