This story was updated Friday with the latest information from sawfish researchers.
As the number of endangered sawfish deaths continues to rise in the Lower Keys, federal wildlife officials announced plans Wednesday to take the unprecedented step of trying to rescue sick fish.
“An effort of this kind has never been done before in the United States. The logistics are complex,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement.
Starting next week, the agency said it will begin catching sawfish showing signs of distress to try to prevent more deaths. As of Friday, 29 rare smalltooth sawfish had been confirmed dead, with 118 affected by an ailment scientists have not yet been able to identify. The first death was reported in late January, amid widespread reports of dozens of other species in the Lower Keys spinning and showing signs of distress.
READ MORE: As sawfish deaths mounted, wildlife officers and researchers scrambled to respond, records show
"The number of mortalities we've witnessed over the last month and a half, or two months, has been unprecedented. And so it takes an unprecedented response," Adam Brame, NOAA's sawfish recovery coordinator, said Thursday.
The effort will be similar to other marine strandings, but with a higher degree of difficulty.
"We've responded marine mammal strandings and sea turtle strandings. But those are air breathing animals and the response effort for them is going to be very different than for a large fish that breathes underwater," he said. "It'll take some serious manpower when we're talking about a 10- to 14-foot fish that has a large weapon, if you will, on its front end."
NOAA will work with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Havenworth Coastal Conservation, Ripley’s Aquariums, Mote Marine Lab and Dynasty Marine Associates to catch the fish. Rescued fish will be taken to the groups’ facilities while FWC officials continue to investigate what’s causing other species to become sick.
Once captured, sick fish will be moved to large quarantine tanks and treated by veterinarians, Brame said. The fish will be moved to large quarantine tanks and treated by veterinarians. Some may even be trucked to facilities out of state using a Ripley’s Aquarium truck outfitted with a 30,000-gallon tank.
The goal is to learn as much as possible about what’s making the sawfish sick, and then get them well enough to release back into the wild, he said. While they'd prefer to release fish where they were found, conditions in the Lower Keys may mean they'll be released elsewhere.
Reports to the sawfish hotline at 1-844-4SAWFISH will help guide rescue work, he said.
"Be really specific in any location. That really helps us respond," he said. "This is a very large-scale event. It doesn't seem like it when we say it's isolated to the Lower Keys. But the Lower Keys covers a lot of ground."
The die-off comes in the wake of an unprecedented summer heat wave that drove water temperatures up about 5 degrees on average. Weeks of prolonged heat bleached coral throughout the Keys and killed other species, including starfish and jellyfish.
Scientists worried at the time that the prolonged heat — an event expected to grow worse as climate change raises global temperatures — could have cascading effects. It’s not clear if the heat caused this outbreak. Scientists have also identified multiple toxins found in dead fish and elevated levels in water samples of a toxin linked to ciguatera.
Scientists are especially worried that the sawfish death count is higher than confirmed deaths because adult sawfish live in deeper water and, unlike other fish with bladders, they don't float when they die.
"Unfortunately this seems to be affecting larger individuals which gives us great pause," he said. "We don't know what impacts that has on the population as a whole."
