An hour before the sun dipped below the Key West horizon, Veronika Frystacka walked on a pier when a crowd formed.
A bizarre-looking fish thrashed on rocks below the bystanders. It had a snout like a chainsaw and stretched 6 feet long.
Frystacka, 30, had only seen this prehistoric creature in textbooks and aquariums. It was a smalltooth sawfish, an almost mythical endangered species that lurks Southwest Florida waters in the shadows.
She hit record.
“It’s amazing!” her 5-year old nephew can be heard saying on the video.
A week later, Frystacka encountered posts on Facebook about sawfish dying in the Florida Keys. That’s when it dawned on her what she had witnessed in late February.
Frystacka didn’t just document a chance encounter with an endangered species.
She had filmed its demise.
“This was definitely weird to see,” Frystacka wrote in an email to state biologists on March 1, six days after her sighting. She emailed her video to a state government hotline created so the public could share reports of sawfish spotted in the wild. The hotline was set up 20 years ago by state biologists tracking the revival of sawfish populations. But, in recent months, it has become a crucial tool to log their mass death.
Frystacka’s email was one of hundreds sent to the state in recent weeks of sawfish and scores of other species behaving erratically, often near tourists or populated boardwalks. The animals are turning up dead, washing ashore across the Florida Keys, according to messages reviewed by the Tampa Bay Times.
Since January, at least 43 sawfish died and nearly 180 got sick. And it’s not just sawfish: more than 50 species are showing signs of distress, according to the latest Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission data. The number of sick and dead species is almost certainly higher, though, as carcasses across the island chain are lost to nature. Sharks, sting rays and, as of this week, stone crabs, have all shown odd behavior.
This upheaval is reflected in the more than 400 emails sent to the hotline over the past month. The public logged at least five dead sawfish and a dead nurse shark, in addition to nearly three dozen sightings where abnormal fish behavior is possible.
In some cases, emailers didn’t send their observations until days or weeks after the encounters. They didn’t think much of what they witnessed, they wrote, until they heard about what was happening.
“I hope this helps you get to the bottom of whatever is causing this awful outbreak,” wrote one emailer March 15, who flagged a video of an erratic sawfish near the Boynton Beach Inlet.
Scientists haven’t solved the mystery of what’s causing the disruption, but they are pinpointing several clues. A spokesperson for the state wildlife agency said scientists are focusing on harmful algal blooms — and the toxins they produce.
In February, a team of researchers from Florida Gulf Coast University traveled to the Keys and collected water, algae and fish samples. Their tests showed high levels of an algae called gambierdiscus that can create toxins that throw fish neurological systems out of balance. Samples were between five and 30 times above average, according to Mike Parsons, a professor of marine science at the university.
The spinning and distressed fish are found near seagrass beds and shallow-water environments, Parsons said. That may explain why inshore species, like snook and snappers, are affected, too.
“Just a note to say I observed a large snook erratically swimming in tight circles,” one witness near Big Pine Key wrote in an email to state biologists in early March. “Certainly not normal behavior, the fish was going berserk almost like it was hooked but no hook was in the fish.”
Scientists are working “nonstop”
In 1999, Gregg Poulakis, a biologist who leads the state’s sawfish research group, began working with a colleague to create a hotline to log public sightings. The state launched it about five years later.
Lately, reports to the hotline from the Keys have picked up, Poulakis said. The state’s sawfish research team has been working “nonstop” since the die-off began, and the email hotline is a big help, Poulakis said.
“The sooner people let us know when they have information regarding a sick sawfish, the sooner we can respond,” he said. “Minutes can be the difference between whether the sawfish is still at the reported location when staff arrive.”
Barb Huether, 72, hadn’t been to Key West in over a decade until she went on vacation with her husband, Judd, at the end of February.
The couple walked by the shore at the Southernmost Beach Resort one afternoon when she saw a commotion. Huether thought maybe a swimmer was drowning, she said.
As they got closer, they saw three fins jutting out of the water. Then came the chainsaw snout.
“It was just fascinating,” Huether said. She recalled asking someone nearby what she was looking at. It was a sawfish, they replied, and it was clear it wasn’t doing well.
“It just kept swimming around in circles,” Huether said. “It was kind of creepy.”
She stood there for over an hour taking footage she would later email to Florida wildlife biologists. She learned in the coming days from a state biologist that the animal was towed to deeper waters with the hopes it could heal.
It didn’t survive.
“We’re learning more and more”
When a high-profile wildlife issue emerges in the Florida Keys, state biologists call Doug Mader.
A wildlife veterinarian by trade, Mader has worked with Florida’s wildlife agency for more than two decades, dealing with anything from Key deer to alligators, crocodiles, marsh rabbits and sea turtles. These days, he’s been busy with other Keys veterinarians helping with the die-off.
Mader said biologists are looking into a number of toxins as potential culprits. He likened the current state of play to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic: Science was discovering something each day. But nobody knew for sure yet exactly how the virus worked.
“As this progresses, we’re learning more and more,” Mader said. “There’s a tremendous number of very good minds working on this.”
Mader was at the scene April 6 after a crew captured and brought to land its first sick sawfish off Cudjoe Key that someone reported to the state hotline. The 11-foot male remained in a holding tank for roughly a week before biologists drove it nearly seven hours north to Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota, where it remains in rehabilitation. Its treatment includes tube feeding and vitamins three times a week.
“The sawfish seems to be responding well but is still sick,” wrote the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in an update. The first-of-its-kind rescue is part of a broader attempt by the federal agency to track and save as many sawfish as possible. As of this week, crews haven’t made any more rescue attempts.
“It’s taking an emotional toll on the locals here,” Mader said in an interview. “To see an animal suffer like this, it really is devastating.”
So many talented people have stepped up to help, Mader said. And that’s also evident in the troves of emails sent to state biologists: People aren’t just emailing their videos and observations. They’re offering to assist, records show.
One environmental engineering professor at the University of Miami who’s concerned about what’s happening wrote she “would very much like to help.”
A California-area scientist who studied shark die-offs in San Francisco Bay sent a recent study that could shed some light, he said. And at least a half-dozen people offered theories for why fish continue to spin and die, emails show.
Scientists have all but ruled out a few theories on what’s causing the die-off. Water and fish tissue samples haven’t detected harmful red tide blooms. Dead fish specimens haven’t shown signs of bacterial infection. And the water’s oxygen, salinity and temperature aren’t suspected causes, either.
The gambierdiscus species “is the possibility that is making the most sense at this point,” Nick Roberts, a spokesperson for the Miami-based nonprofit Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, wrote in an email.
The Florida Legislature in its latest budget offered up to $2 million to get to the bottom of the die-off, but organizations working the crisis say that’s not enough and, even if it were, the funding won’t become available until later this summer. Gov. Ron DeSantis has yet to sign the budget.
The groups responding have blown through budgets and reserves, Tonya Wiley, team leader of the Smalltooth Sawfish Recovery Team and director of Palmetto-based Havenworth Coastal Conservation, said recently. The public is encouraged to donate to make up for the lack of funding, she said.
“We desperately need a BIG infusion of money,” Wiley wrote in an email to the Times. “We need local, state, and federal agencies to assist with resources, equipment, and supplies. We need companies and foundations to donate money so we can continue to fund this unprecedented emergency response.”
Death by a thousand cuts
Diver Gregg Furstenwerth has filmed hundreds of videos depicting fish in crisis. Footage from as early as November showed pinfish aggressively darting around.
But one encounter bothered him the most: In the last week of February, Furstenwerth encountered a goliath grouper acting erratically near a seagrass bed. The animal was clearly not OK, he said.
“That was the most disturbing because they are an extremely durable species,” Furstenwerth said in an interview. “They are not a weak fish.”
Furstenwerth’s footage appeared regularly in emails sent to the sawfish hotline, with people sharing links to his social media posts. He’s become so well known by biologists, he said, that he has access to the state’s cloud drive, where he can upload videos and label where and when he filmed them. The state has even used Furstenwerth’s videos in its updates on the die-off.
Lately, he’s been thinking twice before entering the water. Florida’s wildlife agency said swimming where there are dead or sick fish is not recommended. And eating them isn’t advised, according to the agency.
“It’s death by a thousand cuts: We had coral bleaching that caused immense stress on fish last summer. Now this. What else is going to happen?” Furstenwerth said. “The environment is absolutely trashed down here compared to when I was I kid. We’re dealing with multiple crises.”
If you’d like to help the sawfish research or rescue efforts, you can donate by visiting sawfishrecovery.org.
To report a sawfish sighting, email Sawfish@MyFWC.com or call 844-472-9347.
This story was produced in partnership with the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a multi-newsroom initiative founded by the Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, WLRN Public Media and the Tampa Bay Times.
