Thousands of dead fish cause rotten smell, seagull infestation in NJ town

NEW JERSEY - Something fishy is up in one NJ town – and the smell in the air proves it!

A rotten smell is filling the air in Little Egg Harbor and some people say the cause has been popping up in the water. Dead fish are filling one lagoon and attracting tons of seagulls.

As soon as you get to the New Jersey neighborhood, you can smell a strong fishy odor.

The thousands of dead fish in the lagoon also caused seagulls to also flock to the area and now neighbors say this has made living here almost unbearable.

"Well, if you were ever at the Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan, it’s probably about 10 times worse," Joseph DiGrande told our sister station, FOX 29 Philadelphia.

On a summer day, the small neighborhood is usually filled with people on their balconies, riding their boats and taking walks. But now that tens of thousands of dead fish have filled the lagoon on Osborn Island, neighbors say the smell is too strong to bare. 

"It's definitely unhealthy. You can't go outside. You can't breathe. You really can't stay outside more than 10 minutes," DiGrande said.

The fish are so closely packed together that, from an aerial view, you almost can’t even make out what's crowding the water.  

DiGrande has lived there since 2019 and says this has been happening two to three times a year for three years now. Other times, crews have come to vacuum up the dead fish.

"Here we go again. We wait all summer to enjoy our home on the water, and you’re literally locked in the house for two weeks," DiGrande said.

Cheyenne Corin, with FOX 29 Philadelphia, helped contribute to this report.