Newark Officials Warn Residents Not to Eat Fish Swimming in City Streets after Flooding
OutdoorHub Reporters 06.03.15
Have you ever wanted to fish right from your front porch? For some residents of Newark, New Jersey, that is now a possibility—but not exactly something they want. Heavy rains pummeled the city recently, flooding nearby streams, lakes, and even sewers. According to Fox News, the flooding is so severe in some places that fish are swimming freely down the road. Many residents, including some anglers, have turned out to try and save the fish and stem the flooding. Others, however, see it as a chance to net some fish for the frying pan.
In response to reports of people attempting to harvest the flood fish, the Newark Health and Community Wellness Department is now urging people to avoid eating the animals due to possible contamination with waste and other hazardous materials.
“We’re just alerting the community because of last night’s flooding,” the agency’s director, Hanaa Hamdi, told ABC News on Monday. “It’s really out of an abundance of caution.”
Hamdi added that residents should not trap, catch, or keep any of the fish they find swimming through Newark’s streets. Yet many people, including some anglers, are out with nets and bags where the fish have congregated. Instead of keeping them to eat, residents say they want to return the fish to their natural habitat before the flood waters recede and leave the animals stranded.
“One guy had a rake, he was raking [the fish] down, the other guy had a bucket and I had a net and we chased them [into the lake] but they come right back,” Lorenzo Davis, a local angler, told WABC.
You can watch anglers attempting to save the fish below:
ABC News Videos | ABC Entertainment News
Davis and other fishermen attempted to net off the lake to prevent the fish from returning, but had little luck. Most of the fish appear to have come from the Weequahic River, where five inches of rain overnight on Sunday drove a number of carp into the streets. Anglers said that the average weight of they fish they found was between seven to 10 pounds.
