MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By JULIE MURPHY, The Daytona Beach News Journal – “ORMOND-BY-THE-SEA — Officials believe that thousands of fish that washed ashore Sunday, both at Ormond-by-the-Sea and Ponce Inlet, are the by-catch of shrimp boats, a Volusia County Beach Patrol captain said.

‘We don’t know absolutely for sure, but I’ve called around and everyone seems to think they are from the shrimp boats,’ Capt. Tammy Marris said Sunday afternoon.

Crowds at Ormond-by-the-Sea thinned as the dead fish washed ashore in the early afternoon.

‘It was packed and we were swimming and swimming,’ said resident Monique Marella. ‘Then the fish came and you sure couldn’t be the water. Everyone just left.’

Marella and her companions said three shrimp boats had been with 100 yards of the shore.

‘At first everyone just thought it was (the shrimp boats), but there were so many fish,’ she said. ‘I don’t see how it could be that.’

Dead fish, mostly whiting, were visible on the beach as far as the eye could see both to the north and to the south.

Kevin Soravilla, visiting from New Jersey, was worried that a lack of oxygen or a drop in the water temperature caused the fish to die.

‘There’s just so many of them,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.'” Read more.