{"id":197226,"date":"2026-03-19T01:25:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T01:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/197226\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T01:25:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T01:25:24","slug":"study-links-buccaneer-lagoon-fish-deaths-to-fertilizer-run-off-lee-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/197226\/","title":{"rendered":"Study links Buccaneer Lagoon fish deaths to fertilizer run-off | Lee County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. (WINK)\u2014A study done by the FGCU Water School and the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation shows fertilizer run-off <a href=\"https:\/\/www.winknews.com\/news\/lee\/unusual-number-of-dead-fish-found-in-lagoon-on-fort-myers-beach\/article_2e82123a-22e1-48f5-8d7d-273b05f2aa4a.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">killed fish across Buccaneer Lagoon last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Water samples from the lagoon came back with non-toxic dinoflagellates, which is fertilizer run-off. The area that saw the most dead fish was tucked back into a canal, but everyone in the surrounding area became familiar with the fishy smell for the last week.<\/p>\n<p>If a breeze kicks in, that smell is still there. The water gets clearer each day.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Haven&#8217;t seen any, like, new dead fish, at least,&#8221; Teresa Miller said.<\/p>\n<p>Miller lives on Buccaneer Lagoon and showed WINK News where almost a week ago, all the birds left and there was a ton of dead fish. The smell was horrible, and the dead fish were getting caught in mangroves and drifting back into the canals.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It seems like it had to be a lot of fertilizer for that many fish to be dead,&#8221; Miller said.<\/p>\n<p>Matt Deapolis is the environmental policy director with SCCF. The run-off from the fertilizer took the oxygen these fish needed to survive.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Anytime you see a fish kill of this magnitude, it&#8217;s indicative of something not being right in the system,&#8221; Deapolis said.<\/p>\n<p>Deapolis said homeowners can do their part to make sure this doesn&#8217;t happen again. He said even where you wash your car and the run-off that comes with that can impact what&#8217;s heading into waterways.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re making choices to garden with native plants, to irrigate your lawn less, to make decisions where you don&#8217;t have to use fertilizer and you don&#8217;t have to irrigate as much,&#8221; Deapolis said.<\/p>\n<p>The Town of Fort Myers Beach does have restrictions in place for using fertilizer on the island.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS BEACH, Fla. (WINK)\u2014A study done by the FGCU Water School and the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[91533,209,211,210,91534,91537,91536,91538,28,1695,91535,73577,24443],"class_list":["post-197226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-blackburn-buccaneer","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-carrier-based-aircraft","tag-environmental-policy-director","tag-fertilizer","tag-fgcu-water-school","tag-florida","tag-fort-myers-beach","tag-lagoon","tag-myers-beach","tag-sanibel-captiva-conservation-foundation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}