Texas State Aquarium Files Suit Against Chemical Supplier

President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Schmid made the announcement on Thursday.

By Rhonda FanningMay 15, 2015 11:13 am

It’s been exactly one month and a day since a ghastly event down in Corpus Christi.

On that day, workers at the Texas State Aquarium applied a white powder to the tanks of two huge exhibits – the Islands of Steel and the flower garden. They were trying to treat an infestation a potentially deadly flatworm that attaches itself to fish.

And then something awful began to happen: the fish in both tanks began to die. A scramble to save the fish was fruitless. In all, nearly 400 aquatic sea creatures were killed.

It now appears that the chemical used to treat the fish was not trichlorfon, which would have been safe, but instead, a chemical used in motor fuels and paint. The container was mislabeled.

Attorneys for the aquarium filed a lawsuit this week against the chemical supplier. President and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Schmid, hopes the suit reveals how the chemicals were mislabeled in the first place.

“That’s the 64 thousand dollar question. From what we found out, evidently the drug is manufactured in China and shipped to a facility somewhere in the western part of the U.S.,” Schmid says. “From there, we believe it’s packaged and sent to the distributor in Florida… Now whether or not they have quality controls in place there, those are all al lot of questions we have at this point. ”

Hear the whole interview on the player above.