MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Gary Kean – “CORNER BROOK Jerry Hackett says it wasn’t the first time he’s seen it, but the last time was decades ago.

Hackett was standing on his family’s wharf in the Curling area of Corner Brook, looking at the hundreds of dead fish floating near the shore or washed up on the beach after the previous night’s high tide.

The dead fish were scattered along a stretch of several kilometres on the southern shore of the Humber Arm Wednesday.

The silver fish are Atlantic saury, a pelagic bait fish that grows almost one foot in length and is easily identified by its needle-like bill. In fact, they are also known as billfish or skippers, the latter for thier tendency to skip along the surface of the water when being chased by predators.

‘I remember seeing them come in like this before,’ said Hackett. ‘It must have been 20 or 25 years ago, though. They came in and they started trying to drive their beaks into the wharf and then they died. It seemed to me like something was chasing them in, like porpoises or something like that.’

Hackett was struck by the fact none of the many seagulls and cormorants nearby seemed interested in eating the fish, although some of the fish had clearly been sampled by a predator of some sort.” Read more.