Pumping air under ice to prevent fish kill

I'm not a fisherman, much less an ice fisherman, but I got interested in this YouTube short I encountered about pumping air under ice to prevent fish kill. Is this something people actually do or just another fake or AI video?

Interesting, tonight’s local news was talking about dead fish being found in local ponds and the lack of oxygen due to the ice. Don’t remember that when I was growing up , many many many years ago.

Never heard of it, certainly doesn't happen around here, and the ice is 3 feet thick for most of the winter.

It's pretty common for shallow lakes around here to have aerators installed. There is usually a motor installed in a small shed on shore that pumps air to the aerator somewhere in the middle of the lake. In mild years the DNR often doesn't run them but in hard winters they can prevent winter kills. They usually leave a spot of open water that never freezes. The lake I'm on has one. It's a small lake with maximum depth of 10'. Long winters with heavy snow cover (which blocks sunlight getting through the ice) can cause a lack of oxygen and significant fish kills. I haven't seen a hard winter kill in over 20 years but it's a very unpleasant site and the image of rotting fish 20' thick along the shoreline still pops into my head whenever I swim in the lake.

There are many other, even shallower lakes, in the immediate area and they do not have aerators installed. Mostly because they're too shallow to really sustain a sport fishery and the DNR doesn't care much if the carp and bullhead suffer losses. Despite the lack of aerator it still stakes a pretty bad winter to cause a fish kill.

Alan

I think the video looks like BS though. I think the only reason those people are blowing air under the ice is because it looks cool. Notice they all appear to be thin ice with no snow cover. Not what I would consider conditions for winter kill.

Alan

I've never seen anything like that on the lakes here but I've built several Koi ponds for people and always recommend a floating de-icer in the winter. In small ponds like that, the issue is ammonia (from rotting debris & fish waste) trapped under the ice and building up to toxic levels. The small hole allows the ammonia to escape and oxygen to get in.

The only winter fish kill that I've seen on an actual lake was a private lake that had been drawn down for dam repairs and the fish hadn't been removed. Population was too high for the amount of water left and they lost all of the fish. (dead fish lead to even higher ammonia concentration which killed more fish and so on)

If someone is blowing air under the ice with a leaf blower, I'd think they'd best be doing it at least once a week or it's unlikely to make a difference IMO

It's funny that the fish managed to survive all those years before modern civilization came to their rescue.