Record breaking cold weather in Florida has affected more than the citrus crops. Florida’s fish have taken a beating too.

In what would normally be warm waters teaming with fish is now filled with dead floating fish. The tropical fish can’t survive when the water temperature falls below 45-50 degrees. Hopefully warming days will revive those that haven’t succumbed.

These past few frigid days have seen more fish dying off than the last big cold kill of 1977. That year more than a million snook died. (Snook is an excellent fish for eating as game.) A similar deep freeze in 89 killed over 60,000 snook in Tampa Bay and that population took a good five years to increase in size.

It’s not just the snook that was in trouble with the declining temps, it was also puffer fish, catfish, grouper, snapper, pompano and more.

Let’s hope the warm sunny rays return to Florida soon.