The number of crocodiles found dead in two barren sewage ponds in Hellshire, St Catherine, climbed to 10 on Thursday after environmental officers returned to the area following the discovery of six on April 22, 2025, the day Jamaica joined the world in promoting environmental protection and awareness in observance of Earth Day.

Up to press time Thursday it was still a mystery how the sewage ponds, operated by National Water Commission (NWC), became dry as there was no word from the State entity after a spokesman said a statement was being prepared on the matter.

On Thursday, Hope Zoo General Curator Joey Brown described the discovery as horrifying.

Brown told the Jamaica Observer that the authorities were first alerted about the crocodiles by a resident on Tuesday.

“A local resident had been just passing by, and I think just saw two crocs — one of them was alive, one was dead — so he called NEPA (National Environment and Planning Agency), and then we organised to get down there. Once we got there, we found a horror scene of several other dead crocodiles,” Brown said.

“Those two ponds were pretty barren; we got five in one pond, and one croc in another pond. But then, there’s one or two other empty ponds out there, but they’re full of bush and grass, so we need to go do a thorough check there to make sure there’s nothing, hopefully, in there,” he added.

Brown said that the team was able to rescue an adult male crocodile, about 12-feet in length, from one of the ponds.

“He was stuck in the pond; he looked nearly dead, and we were able to pull him out and immediately put him in one of the nearby ponds with water, but I hope he can make it,” said Brown who shared that he has “worked with crocs all my life”.

Late Thursday, Brown said on their return to the ponds they found two more dead adults and two juveniles crocodiles.

Asked if he and his colleagues had determined what caused the deaths of the animals, which have been classified as endangered since 1971 and are protected by law, Brown said they were dehydrated.

“Crocodiles are very strong and hardy, they can easily go weeks, if not months, without food, but being without water, and then down there in those ponds there’s no shelter, no shade, you’re totally kind of like exposed to the sun,” he told the Observer.

“So it probably happened over a couple weeks, where they’re not only starving, but they had no water; they were really dehydrated… because all the crocs were emaciated and, like, kind of malnourished, but it would have been the dehydration that would have killed them because there was just no water whatsoever… You could tell [because] they were all found around the edges of the ponds, and you can see their scratch marks and their claw marks where the were trying to climb out,” Brown explained.

“It would have been brutal… very agonising, and it wouldn’t have been anything instant,” he said.

“I have one picture, it’s the most heartbreaking thing, where [the crocodile] is more towards the middle [of the pond] it’s probably like the last little watering hole before all the water dried up,” he shared.

Brown also said two of the dead crocodiles — an adult male and female — were found together.

“They were probably a couple, and they literally died curled up on top of each other,” he said. “They were skeletons, so they’ve been like that for probably at least nearly a few weeks or a month. The female, from the decomposition, her belly had opened up and was full of eggs, so she was pregnant. It was like the most heartbreaking thing you could see; it was like a couple that died, like a Romeo and Juliet-type of thing.”

Asked if he knew what caused the loss of water from the sewage ponds, Brown said “I can’t say for certain.”

He recalled, though, a similar situation two years ago when he and environmental officers went to the area to check on the crocodiles and found a pond that was near dry.

“It had just like a little bit of water in it, but there were two crocs down there and they were really skinny and they were stuck. We went back with a bunch of pallets we had gathered from the zoo and we tied the pallets together going down the pond liner to kind of make like a little ramp ladder. We left it there overnight and sure enough, over the next few nights, all of those crocodiles were able to climb up and get out,” he said.

“So we thought that was all resolved; and then over the past year I feel like they’ve kind of abandoned several of those ponds and those crocs were just all stuck in there,” Brown reasoned.

He said the ponds serve as a form of refuge for the animals and, while they don’t have the best water quality, “there’s plenty of birds and fish and food” for them.

“We found nests down there before… so it’s almost like a breeding ground for them,” he added.

Brown said that zoologists and environmental officers conduct surveys in the area once or twice each year.

“Because we have these crocs that have lived there for many years, we would regularly go down there and count them, see how they’re doing, but we haven’t been down there in several months and so we didn’t know [that the ponds were dry],” he explained.

However, he said the last time he went there, four or five months ago, he noticed signs of abandonment.

“There’s no work being done down there. There are no nice trails and roads, or paths, and it’s all overgrown… so it feels like it’s just totally abandoned,” he said.

“Luckily, this person had called us, and we got down there and [could respond to] this terrible scene,” he said.

This dead crocodile was found on Thursday, April 24, 2025, in one of the dry National Water Commission sewage ponds in Hellshire, St Catherine after zoologists and environmental officials returned to the ponds where six dead crocodiles were found on April 22, 2025, Earth Day. (Photo: Joey Brown)

The skeletal head of a juvenile crocodile found in one of the dry National Water Commission sewage ponds in Hellshire, St Catherine, on April 24, two days after six of the animals were found dead in two dry ponds on Earth Day, April 22. (Photo: Joey Brown)

These two dead crocodiles were found together in one of the dry National Water Commission sewage ponds in Hellshire, St Catherine on April 22, Earth Day. (Photo: Joey Brown)