Thousands of Fish Mysteriously Die in Shark River

Thousands of dead fish are washing onto the shores of Shark River in Belmar, New Jersey. Experts are speculating that the fish suddenly all started dying at once as the oxygen levels in the river were utterly depleted.

As of Tuesday morning, local news stations from Belmar and the larger Monmouth County were reporting seeing the dead bodies of fish piling up along the edges of Shark River.

Bob Matthews of the Fisherman's Den in Belmar called local reporter John Oswald early Tuesday morning when he first headed out to the lake, excitedly telling the reporter that there were more mossbunker fish feeding on the surface of the river than he had ever seen in his life.

Then the story broke. By the time Oswalad and other local reporters reached the river it had been confirmed, "they weren't feeding, they were dying," Oswald wrote in the Daily Record.

Exact numbers remain uncertain, but numerous reports are saying that possibly tens-of-thousands of mossbunker, winter flounder, fluke, and even blowfish had mysteriously appeared in Shark River just to die.

According to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), how Shark River became a mass grave for fish remains unclear, but an official investigation has been launched and fish, algea , and water samples have been collected.

Official test results won't be available until later this week, but initial reports detail one thing that is relatively certain: these fish were asphyxiated.

According to the DEP, it is possible that too many large schools of fish migrated into the river at the same time, depleting one another of the River's limited oxygen supply, CBS New York reports.

"I've never seen it in this river before, anything like this. Never," Bob Matthews told local reporters. "I've heard of it, and I know it's happened a lot of other places."

Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the New Jersey DEP, noted in an interview with CBS that a similar case occurred in 2010 along Delaware Bay, where millions of fish died of oxygen depletion.