Test results to confirm source of river fish kill

Inland Fisheries Ireland is waiting for test results to confirm the cause of a significant fish kill on the Kiltha river in Castlemartyr, east Cork, last weekend.

The IFI says that “many thousands” of brown trout, including trout fry, parr and adults, along with salmon fry and parr, brook lamprey, stickleback and stone loach were killed.

The kill was reported by anglers late last Saturday on a 5.5km section of the Kiltha from Mogeely downstream to its confluence with the Dower river.

It was investigated last Sunday morning, the IFI said, and had been traced to a pollutant of a “toxic nature”. It said several “potential sources” of the pollutant were being investigated.

The Kiltha is described by the IFI as an “important salmonid spawning and nursery tributary” of the Womanagh river, which flows east into the sea at Youghal. It said the incident was “particularly disappointing” as the Womanagh, which is currently closed to salmon angling, had been “responding well to management and has seen its fish populations increase over the past several years”.