29-07-2025
Residents wake up to find Jubilee in Fairhope
UPDATE (6 p.m.): You almost have to see it to believe it. Thursday morning, the Eastern Shore woke up to what's known as a Jubilee.
'Never have I seen this, there's thousands of fish there,' Jayson Henderson said. 'We walk out there and, man, there's just, you know, multiple species of fish everywhere catfish, flounder, redfish, speckled trout, crabs.'
It happens when there are low oxygen levels in the bay and fish and other marine life rush to the shore looking for air. That's when everyone grabs their nets and buckets to rush and catch them.
'I said, let's grab everything and we have the gear in the Jeep,' Randy Prisco, who came looking for a jubilee, said. 'We came to see. So far we haven't seen any.'
Jubilees are rare, but when one happens, word spreads fast around town.
'Everybody just jumps on the phone, calls friends, and before you know it, everybody's down here,' Prisco said.
This is only the second reported jubilee this summer on Mobile Bay. People in Fairhope tell WKRG News 5 this one was a good one.
'I caught two of them,' Henderson said. 'I was trying to make sure they were of size because you want to stay legal.'
Jubilees can only happen under the right mix of wind, tide and temperature, and you never truly know when they might pop up.
'You never know unless you just go see,' Henderson added. 'So got to be there, right place, right time.'
PREVIOUS REPORTING
FAIRHOPE, Ala. (WKRG) — Fish washed ashore Thursday morning in Fairhope as part of a Jubilee — a natural phenomenon that only occurs in Tokyo and Mobile Bay.
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According to Dauphin Island Sea Lab Senior Marine Scientist Brian Dzwonkowski, the water in Mobile Bay gets hot during the summer, leading to the water not being able to hold a lot of oxygen.
This means that the waves close to the shoreline mix with the oxygen that the fish are looking for, so the fish go right up to shore to get what little oxygen they can.
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Jayson Henderson captured videos of the July 24 event.
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