A marine mystery is confounding residents of southwest Nova Scotia who are watching thousands of dead fish, starfish, crabs, clams, scallops and lobster wash up on the shore.

Residents of Plympton, a small community in Digby County, say they have been finding dead herring on the shore of St. Mary’s Bay for more than a month, but recently other marine life has started washing up dead. Dead fish have also been found on the shores of the Annapolis Basin.

"We started finding starfish, crabs, flounder. We found ocean perch and then yesterday we started finding scallops on the beach and like I said everything's dead... we'd like to know what's going on," said Karl Cole.

"It's just really sad to see, you know, hundreds of starfish, shellfish. I grew up clamming here so to come to your hometown and see so much death on the beach is really sad,” said Eric Hewey.

Hewey took photos of the beach and posted them to his Facebook page Monday, writing: “Herring, Lobster, Bar clams, Starfish and more. No idea what caused this. Likely it could be a natural disaster. Please try not to jump to any conclusions until we get a response from Natural Resources, or another credible source.”

In less than a day his post has been shared almost 11,000 times and garnered more than 1,000 comments. Many people are ignoring Hewey’s admonishment and suggesting their own theories about what happened.

But there are still no answers. On Dec. 15, Fisheries and Oceans Canada announced that tests on the dead herring had produced negative results, meaning no infections or infectious agents had been detected in the small, silvery fish. It said it would continue testing and warned consumers to only buy herring from licensed harvesters until they figure out why the fish died.

Residents say the department is aware of the latest developments and has taken samples for further testing. CTV Atlantic reached out to the department for comment on Tuesday, but did not receive a response.

-With a report from CTV News Atlantic