Airborne fish sparks New Jersey power outage, electricity company says - CNN
Airborne fish sparks Sayreville, New Jersey, power outage, electricity company says | CNN
An incident involving a bird gave new meaning to the term “fish fry” after an electric company suspected an osprey of dropping its meal onto power lines – triggering an outage in a New Jersey neighborhood.
A fish that fell from a bird’s grip landed on a transponder in Sayreville, located just southwest of New York’s Staten Island, according to Jersey Central Power and Light Company spokesperson Chris Hoenig.
“Animal contact is a common cause of power outages; however, fish are not on the list of frequent offenders,” Hoenig told CNN in an email.
The outage on August 12 impacted around 2,100 people and lasted less than two hours.
The Sayreville Police Department poked fun at the incident on Facebook, naming the deceased fish as Gilligan and pointing a finger at an osprey as “the suspect,” which was “last seen flying south,” the post read.
“Please let us not forget the victim in this senseless death,” the police department’s post said. “Gilligan was a hard-working family man. He was a father to thousands of children.”
Anyone with information on the case was asked to contact “Det. John Silver, who handles all of our fish cases,” according to the post.
The electric company offered its sympathies to the osprey for losing its lunch over Sayreville.
“If you’ve ever dropped your ice cream cone at the fair, you know the feeling,” Hoenig said, adding that the company appreciated customers’ patience as power was restored.
The Sayreville area has a large presence of ospreys, which were on the endangered species list in New Jersey until less than a decade ago, according to Hoenig.
“We have a very active osprey and raptor protection program, which includes surveying and monitoring nests and following strict protocols in relocating osprey nests that are located on our equipment or too close to power lines,” he said.
The 2022 New Jersey Osprey Project Survey and Census documented 733 nesting pairs of the birds across the state, according to the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: nuclear
Nuclear energy provides almost 20 percent of the U.S. electricity supply. Advocates have called for an expanded role for nuclear as an emissions-free fuel source. But the economics of building new reactors are daunting. In addition, lingering safety concerns are an institutionalized part of the calculation of nuclear regulation, and highly radioactive nuclear waste remains a can that public officials have been inclined to kick down the road. The Energy Information Administration projects a sharp decline in nuclear power generation over the next decade, as new nuclear plants — two are planned — are more than offset by anticipated retirements of several operating reactors.