There is another mystery along the shores of the Ottawa River, this time involving seagulls. Nearby residents have found half a dozen dead birds and nearly as many dying birds in the Britannia area by Ottawa's Water Filtration Plant.
This occurrence is just a couple weeks after hundreds of fish were found floating in the east end of the Ottawa River.
Igor Bouga walks this stretch of the Ottawa River fairly regularly. So it was with some surprise that he found several dead seagulls along his path today.
“I took a walk 300 metres along,” he says, “and noticed seven seagulls dead and one duck. It’s unusual. I’ve never seen so many.”
Even more alarming for him were the number of seagaulls that appeared weak or sick.
“I have no idea,” he says, “I have no idea but it's very surprising for me.”
The Ottawa Riverkeeper says it has been notified about the seagulls but stresses it's highly unlikely there is any connection to the dead fish from a couple of weeks ago, whose source was determined to be the Lievre River in Quebec, which empties into the Ottawa River.
“It's still a developing story,” says Patrick Nadeau, the Executive Director of the Ottawa Riverkeeper, “but we can say with high confidence that this event is unrelated to the fish kills events in the Lievre River because geographically these are two very different areas and so it is safe to say these are unrelated incidents.”
Nadeau says they're still waiting for lab results from those separate fish kills on the Lievre and Ottawa Rivers near Cumberland. He says he was frustrated to find out the Quebec Environment Ministry did not take samples to help narrow the source of the potentially toxic contamination.
“When an incident like this occurs,” says Nadeau, “there's a limited time window to collect samples when you're trying to determine what caused these fish kills so it appears we have a missing piece of puzzle because water samples weren't taken.”
Back in Ottawa's west end, Nicky Florent is wondering what's killing the seagulls around here and whether her dog Cooper, who is play “fetch the stick” in the river, might need to find somewhere else to play.
“He needs to come out and we need to find another water hole for him,” she says.
The Ottawa Riverkeeper says Canadian Wildlife Services under Environment and Climate Change Canada is responsible for migratory birds like seagulls. On Thursday, Environment and Climate Change Canada's Wildlife Enforcement Directorate said it is currently investigating the cause of the deaths of these birds and is unable to comment further at this time.
On the fish kill, Nadeau says fortunately the Ontario and federal governments took water samples; we are still waiting for those results.
