Even in the New year, wild fire still found its way into the news like the Los Angeles Wild fire that has caused thousands of people to migrate, a large number of people homeless, and some lost properties in the millions. While as humans, we count our losses with wild fires, land animals and trees do the same when it becomes forest fire but would we say the same about aquatic animals like fishes?
We would not expect fishes to have a problem with wild fire since fire tend not to do well in water but this is not the case because when there is a wild fire close to where an ocean or lake is which means it is close to a forest, the fishes tend to suffer as well as the water body itself.
Freemalaysiatoday
With wild fire taking over an entire forest region close to a water body, the quality of the water drops, and since when trees burn, they can affect the roots of the trees, then the landscape can also be affected and debris from the burnt also gets into the water or are washed into the water body by rainfall. When there are a lot of dead matters in the water, it could lead to an algal bloom which could look like a good thing at first since water animals feed on these algea but the vast majority of them that aren't eaten starts to die and sink into the water while other begin to deplete the amount of oxygen present in the water and at this point, it becomes bad news as the animals need oxygen to survive.
It isn't all bad in the long run when the trees and rocks start to become hiding place and new homes for the fishes thereby creating a new habitat for them but as at the time of the fire, the temperature of the water can increase and this leads to stress for the fishes as swimming in warm water increases the energy being used as well as increase the need to feed which is usually not available at the time as a result of the fire.
While nature shows the aquatic habitat its own side of negativity, human activity while trying to put off the fire to save the trees and ourselves add to it. Firefighters can pour dirt or water manually on the flame to reduce or kill the fire or they can remove the underbrush in areas where the fire hasn't gotten so as to prevent the flame from reaching there. While this might disrupt the ecology of the marine lives, humans can go a step further when the fire goes out of hand and at this point, we use chemicals like fire retardants which usually contain Nitrogen compounds that can be toxic to fishes and other aquatic creature in high concentration.
You know, when something looks bad, it comes with its good and this was what researchers saw when investigating wild fire in forests close to water and some fishes, where it was said that the fire doing its thing allows the fishes to thrive. A good example of fish that would need wild fires to do their thing is the Chinook Salmon which is threatened fish specie which would thrive in a warmer climate. Scientist are looking at managing forest properly and allowing fires to do its thing in a controlled manner would help a lot of fish species.
While a lot of us are not in support of fire especially when they are not managed properly, we cannot deny the fact that fires help certain ecosystem thrive and one of those places is water body where they cannot burn properly but they help the lives in there to survive while they do damage to some lives in there as well. You know, it is just a complex thing to understand how fire would destroy some lives even when they do not come in contact with them and will also help some lives to thrive but in all, its just life and science helping us understand it.
REFERENCE
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/ES13-00325.1
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89926-6
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-wildfires
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/california-water-science-center/science/effects-wildfire
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/california-water-science-center
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/ES13-00325.1
https://www.uaf.edu/news/archives/news-archives-2010-2021
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.2044
https://www.gov.nt.ca/ecc/en/services/wildfire-operations/suppressing-wildland-fires