PEOPLE reportedly harvested some of the dead fish that floated up in the Dawkins Pond canal in Portmore on Monday evening, apparently intending to offer them for sale.

Residents of Washington Mews, one of the communities through which the canal flows, told the Jamaica Observer yesterday that as soon as the kill started surfacing, people scooped up it up by the bucket load.

“Di ‘mount a people mi see wey ketch fish yessidey (Monday)!” one woman said.

“Yuh waan see dem use bucket ah take up di fish dem. All fisherman mi see ketch dem ah carry roun ah Forum go sell,” she continued.

Another woman added: “Mi tell my modda say nuh buy no fish… All a di licky licky people dem ah go get ketch.”

The National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) advised of the fish kill late Monday afternoon and warned against collecting or eating fish from the area, since the cause of the incident was not at that time yet ascertained.

“Death to the fishes could be from ingestion of toxic substances or biological impacts,” the agency said in a statement to the media.

The warning appears not to have been heeded however, as, when the Observer visited the area yesterday morning, there were signs that fish had been removed from the water: single ones lay atop the huge metal storm water drains between the communities of Garveymeade and Westchester.

NEPA, in its release, said the fish were sprat — tiny silver foragers that Jamaicans enjoy fried.

Zoologist Dr Karl Aiken has since said they are anchovies, an oft mistaken relative of the sprat, which can be found in shallow, brackish areas with muddy bottoms, as in estuaries and bays.

The newspaper was unable to verify yesterday if the deadly catch had made its way to the market, but checks at both Port Henderson Road, commonly known as back road, and Causeway Fishing Village revealed that ‘sprat’ was on sale for $250 per pound.

Up to late last evening, NEPA was continuing its probe into the cause of the fish kill.

Residents offered their own opinions, with some in Garveymeade — where the unmistakable stench of untreated sewage often wafts in the air — suggesting that it could be a result of untreated sewage leaking into the waterway, and others wondering if the fish were dumped upstream.

Dr Aiken said the scenarios which may have resulted in the incident are many and varied, though largely speculative at this point.

“(It could be from) chemicals dumped into those waters by unscrupulous persons, oil or petrochemical spills, or a stirring of the oxygen-poor bottom mud by some weather event,” he said.

“But the message must be put out firmly and clearly that under no circumstances should these fish be consumed. It is extremely dangerous because we don’t know if they ingested heavy metals or other dangerous chemicals, but whatever the exposure, was clearly fatal,” the zoologist said.

“When they float it means that decomposition is already at an advanced stage, which means the protein has broken down and they are full of bacteria. They are spoiled, rotten, not suitable for comsumption,” Aiken stressed.