Is marine life killed or injured when lightning strikes in an ocean?
When lightning hits open water, the current is able to travel through the water quite well. How far away the dangerous current travels is not known, but it’s probably on the order of tens of yards. At and very near the strike point–within a few yards–current enters the body of a living organization, resulting in injury or death. At greater distances, the effects are less, so that the current might stun an organism but not kill it. There are few reports of massive fish kills. It may be that there are not too many fish in any single volume in the affected water, they may recover quickly, or maybe larger fish eat the incapacitated fish.
