Oxygen Depletion Likely Cause of Fish Die-Off in Morocco’s Sidi Boughaba Lake

Reacting to this incident, the Ministry of Agriculture, Maritime Fisheries, Rural Development and Water and Forests noted that the analysis results have ruled out any possibility of chemical or organic pollution. According to the department of Aziz Akhannouch, the fish are free of any disease without any epidemiological character, and do not pose any threat to the local fauna and birds.

The incident would have occurred due to the lack of oxygen in the lake waters, accentuated by the increase in temperature and salinity of the waters and the drop in the water level of the lake".

For the ministry’s executives, it is the "Atherine", a small fish species that lives in the continental waters of the northern Atlantic coast of the Kingdom. The same source indicates that a provincial commission has been mobilized to take samples of the fish and the lake water.