If you’re in some spots in Biscayne Bay during the weekend, you might be greeted with an unpleasant sight: dead fish floating on the surface.

That’s the unfortunate aftermath of the relentless rain that South Florida experienced last week—and a reminder of much larger fish kills that have plagued Biscayne Bay in the past few years.

The damage this time seems limited. About 2,000 fish were estimated dead in northern Biscayne Bay, with reports from Morningside to North Bay Village and up to 95th Street. The victims were mostly toadfish, a small species that lives on the bottom in shallow coastal areas that tend to be most dangerous for fish, according to Miami Waterkeeper, a clean-water advocacy group.

Biscayne Bay is no stranger to fish kills. Since 2020, the bay has experienced at least four fish kills. Miami Waterkeeper said the recent heavy rain was likely to blame for the latest one. The surge of freshwater flowing into the bay lowers salinity, which can drive off or even kill some fish.

Little River, which empties into the bay, is one of the county’s most polluted waterways and has been overflowing with storm water since June 11, according to Miami Waterkeeper.

“The freshwater anoxic flow originating from the Little River and Biscayne Canal likely contributed to the conditions that have led to the fish deaths. It’s important to note that there are salinity-control structures in place that release freshwater into the affected area to alleviate flooding and lower the groundwater levels,” said Adriana González Fernández, Miami Waterkeeper’s science and research director.

The Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department said there were several wastewater flows across the region caused by the storms but none made direct contact with surface water. But runoff carries pollutants and animal waste that aren’t helping fish either.

“After storms and flooding, residents should generally expect an increase in pollutants such as bacteria, sediment, chemicals and debris in waterways,” Fernández said. “The safety of waterways after storms can vary depending on the severity of the event and the area affected.”

On one of the days of heaviest rains, June 12, Miami Waterkeeper tested South Florida areas, including Little River, for enterococci, a bacteria that is an indicator of human waste, and found that all water they tested was unsuitable for recreational use. It’s not necessarily always a result of storms, but it definitely can be influenced by them, she said.

Miami-Dade Chief Bay and Water Resources Officer Loren Parra told WPLG-ABC 10 that she was “devastated to see these reports, certainly so early in the rainy season.”

The station shot video of dozens of dead fish floating among debris in murky water in the bay on June 18—days after the region was swamped by up to 20 inches of rain in spots, including Northeast Miami-Dade.

Climate change isn’t helping either. South Florida had a string of fish kills last summer, which was the hottest on record. Researchers blamed it on rising temperatures, which can reduce oxygen in the water and trigger algae blooms that do the same. Climate scientists say It also can turn storm systems wetter.

“Changing climates, characterized by more intense and frequent rain events in South Florida, might exacerbate these fish-kill incidents,” Fernández said. “This trend suggests that such fish kills may become more frequent unless significant climate-mitigation efforts are undertaken.”

2024 Miami Herald. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Engineers at The University of Manchester have unlocked the secrets to designing a robot capable of jumping 120 meters—higher than any other jumping robot designed to date.

Using a combination of mathematics, computer simulations, and laboratory experiments, the researchers have discovered how to design a robot with the optimum size, shape, and arrangement of its parts, allowing it to jump high enough to clear obstacles many times its own size.

The current highest-jumping robot can reach up to 33 meters, which is equivalent to 110 times its own size. Now, researchers have designed a robot that could jump more than 120 meters in the air—or 200 meters on the moon, which is more than twice the height of Big Ben’s tower.

The advancement, published in the journal Mechanism and Machine Theory, will revolutionize applications ranging from planetary exploration to disaster rescue to surveillance of hazardous or inaccessible spaces.

Co-author Dr. John Lo, Research Associate in Space Robotics at The University of Manchester, said, “Robots are traditionally designed to move by rolling on wheels or using legs to walk, but jumping provides an effective way of traveling around locations where the terrain is very uneven, or where there are a lot of obstacles, such as inside caves, through forests, over boulders, or even the surface of other planets in space.

“While jumping robots already exist, there are several big challenges in the design of these jumping machines, the main one being to jump high enough to overcome large and complicated obstacles. Our design would dramatically improve the energy efficiency and performance of spring-driven jumping robots.”

The researchers found that traditional jumping robots often take off before fully releasing their stored spring energy, resulting in inefficient jumps and limiting their maximum height. They also found that they wasted energy by moving side to side or rotating instead of moving straight up.

The new designs must focus on removing these undesirable movements while maintaining the necessary structural strength and stiffness.

Co-author Dr. Ben Parslew, Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering, said, “There were so many questions to answer and decisions to make about the shape of the robot, such as should it have legs to push off the ground like a kangaroo, or should it be more like an engineered piston with a giant spring? Should it be a simple symmetrical shape like a diamond, or should it be something more curved and organic?

“Then, after deciding this we need to think about the size of the robot—small robots are light and agile, but then large robots can carry bigger motors for more powerful jumps, so is the best option somewhere in the middle?

“Our structural redesigns redistribute the robot’s component mass towards the top and taper the structure towards the bottom. Lighter legs, in the shape of a prism and using springs that only stretch are all properties that we have shown to improve the performance and most importantly, the energy efficiency of the jumping robot.”

Although the researchers have found a practicable design option to significantly improve performance, their next goal is to control the direction of the jumps and find out how to harness the kinetic energy from its landing to improve the number of jumps the robot can do in a single charge. They will also explore more compact designs for space missions, making the robot easier to transport and deploy on the moon.