Seiche-Induced Fish Kills in the Sea of Galilee—A Possible Explanation for Biblical Miracles?

Abstract

In Lake Kinneret (the biblical Sea of Galilee), Israel, internal waves of significant amplitude are induced by westerly winds. These waves give rise to upwelling into the surface mixed layer of colder, oxygen-depleted water from the hypolimnetic and metalimnetic layers. If upwelling occurs soon after the onset of annual thermal stratification, when surface mixed layer extends over a narrow depth range, but the hypolimnion is already anoxic, there is a potential for massive fish kills as fish cannot escape the anoxic water that intrudes into the surface mixed layer along the western shore. This study uses a coupled three-dimensional atmosphere-lake model to elucidate the mechanisms behind these infrequent major fish kills in Lake Kinneret. Remarkably, nowadays fish-kill events happen at the same location in the lake where the biblical Miracle of Loaves and Fishes and presumably the Miraculous Catch of Fish occurred two millennia before the present and may explain the appearance of large numbers of easy-to-collect fish close to the shore described in the biblical narratives.