SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Thousands of dead fish have blanketed a canal in Sint Maarten, where officials are struggling to remove what they say is the largest fish kill recorded in the Dutch Caribbean territory.

Government officials met late Monday to talk about strategies as two backhoes continue cleanup efforts while a powerful smell envelops the area.

“The equipment required for a cleanup of this scale is not available locally,” Patrice Gumbs Jr., minister of public housing, spatial planning, environment and infrastructure, told reporters.

He said officials are considering deploying small boats and nets to help clean up the dead fish, which were discovered Saturday in a floodgate canal near the capital, Philipsburg.

The Nature Foundation of Sint Maarten said it has collected water samples and suspects that the invasive tilapias died from a critical drop in oxygen levels. It urged people not to eat the dead fish.

The foundation stressed that the pictures and videos circulating of the dead fish are not AI generated, and that the fish kills often occur from May through October, considered the hottest and driest months.

“During low-oxygen events, fish instinctually flee toward any movement in a search for oxygen,” the foundation wrote in a Facebook post. “It is possible that thousands of tilapia from both ponds collectively moved into this channel, creating a physical bottleneck where they rapidly used up the remaining oxygen in a short amount of time.”