State investigates fish, bird deaths

Photos and video of dead fish and birds washing up on Lehua Island have been spreading on social media days after rat poison pellets were dropped from a helicopter on the steep cliff side of the island to eradicate invasive rodents.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources said an investigation has begun after confirming 45 dead fish, possibly mullet, and two dead birds, possibly juvenile brown boobies, were found floating below the near-vertical cliffs on the north or crater side of the island, located near Niihau.

The drops occurred Wednesday and Aug. 23. The next scheduled application “is planned in the next few weeks depending on weather conditions,” DLNR said Tuesday. A total of 11 tons of pellets of the rodenticide diphacinone had been scheduled to be used on the 284-acre island, home to endangered and threatened seabirds.

State Rep. Dee Morikawa (D, Niihau-Kauai) said there is “a lot of anger” in the community.

“When this first happened, we were kind of told it’s not going to be bad, it’s going to be quick, the poison is not bad for humans,” she said. “Now that there’s dead fish coming up, it’s like an I-told-you-so moment. What happened to the bigger fish that may have eaten the smaller fish? … How sure are you that it won’t affect humans who consume a fish that had eaten one of those sick or dead fish? That’s the big question.”

Morikawa said that was the concern in 2009, when another bait drop occurred.

At that time they were “coincident fish kills” but no trace of diphacinone, said Heath Packard, spokesman for Island Conservation, the nongovernmental organization performing the drops. He said the deaths were caused by toxic blue-green algae.

Commercial fisherman Greg Holzman said he had urged the DLNR to consider bait stations.

“We all seem to have a majority opinion in the community that this pellet drop was kind of a sloppy way to do things,” he said by telephone.

Mullet are the “kind of fish you can catch on bread,” so they would eat the bait floating on the surface, Holzman said. “I worry about the triggerfish and the nenue.”

DLNR said in a news release, “However unlikely the connection, the project partners take any potential risks to nontarget species and marine life extremely seriously.”

Monitoring teams, including project staff and independent monitors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, collected the fish and birds Tuesday, DLNR said in a news release. The samples are in USDA custody and will be examined to determine whether diphacinone is present or caused their death.

DLNR spokesman Dan Dennison said that even if the rodenticide is found in the dead wildlife, a decision on permit is up to the state Department of Agriculture.

The rules and regulations governing the drops all recognize the possibility of the remote chance of “nontarget collateral,” meaning that death of wildlife other than the rats could occur, he said.

“We don’t know if there’s a direct relationship between the mortalities” and the rodenticide, he said.

A team went to the north side using ropes and rappelling Tuesday to investigate, but had been walking the shores only on the other parts of the island.

Packard said the long-term conservation gains and benefits outweigh the short-term potential risks to nontarget species.