Mexico baffled as 50 tons of fish turn up dead

Nearly 50 tonnes of popoche chub fish are latest incident of dead fish removed from lagoon in disastrous year for species. Mexicans are baffled at the sudden death of thousands of fish in a lake in the centre of the country, a dramatic intensification of a problem that no one has yet been able to explain. Nearly 50 tonnes of dead popoche chub fish were removed at the weekend from Lake Cajititln, a lagoon in the central state of Jalisco. Fishermen, firefighters, town hall workers and staff from the state agricultural ministry pulled hundreds of thousands of dead popoche chub fish from the lake and buried them in a pit. The incident comes after of a series of smaller waves of dead popoche chub in the lake in recent months, including one last week, ensuring that 2014 is already by far the worst year for the species, which has been under attack for the past few years. The authorities in the lakeside town of Tlajomulco de Ziga, about 25 minutes' drive south of the city of Guadalajara, had previously blamed the deaths on "a cyclical phenomenon caused by temperature variations and the reduction of oxygen".