1,000 tons of dead fish covering the shores of Japan.

Coach Jose Mourinho and Roma will face Feyenoord for the third consecutive time in European competition, drawing the Dutch opponents in the Europa League play-off round this season.

In all three seasons Mourinho has coached Roma, they have faced Feyenoord in European tournaments. In 2021-2022, Roma beat Feyenoord 1-0 in the Europa Conference League final to win their first ever European trophy. This result brought Roma their first continental cup in history and ended a 14-year title drought since the 2007-2008 Italian Cup.

The two teams met again in the 2022-2023 Europa League quarterfinals. Back then, Feyenoord won 1-0 in the away leg in Rotterdam. But in the second leg at the Olimpico stadium, Roma won 4-1 after extra time to advance with an aggregate score of 4-2.

This season, Mourinho will reunite with coach Arne Slot earlier, in the Europa League play-offs, with Roma finishing second in their Europa League group while Feyenoord dropped down from the Champions League group stage.

Another strong team dropping down from the Champions League, AC Milan, will face French representative Rennes. Milan have won the European Cup/Champions League seven times but have not triumphed in the Europa League. They beat Newcastle in their final group match but still finished behind PSG and Dortmund in the deadly Group F.

Other matchups are: Lens – Freiburg, Young Boys – Sporting, Benfica – Toulouse, Braga – Qarabag, Galatasaray – Sparta Prague, Shakhtar Donetsk – Marseille.

The first legs of the Europa League play-off round will take place on February 15 and the second legs a week later.

The eight winners will advance to the Round of 16 together with the eight group winners – West Ham, Brighton, Rangers, Atalanta, Liverpool, Villarreal, Slavia Prague and Leverkusen.

The Europa Conference League play-off draw was also held the same day, with notable matchups includ2024/12/20241216-Automattic-140851-0095-_web2k.jpg?resize=1536%2C1025&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2024/12/20241216-Automattic-140851-0095-_web2k.jpg?w=2000&ssl=1 2000w” sizes=”auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px” />

“At this time of year, large schools of sardines and mackerels migrate southward off the coast of Hokkaido. They are often hunted by larger predators like dolphins and tuna,” said Kevin Short, a naturalist and professor of cultural anthropology at the Tokyo University of Information Sciences. “It appears a large number of fish were herded into the crescent-shaped shallow bay. There, they panicked and quickly used up all the available oxygen with nowhere else to go.”

According to Short, many similar cases have occurred in the past, although such a large number of fish is highly unusual and rare. Previous recorded cases were in Tokyo Bay and the sea between Japan’s main island of Honshu and Shikoku. In those cases, algal blooms were thought to be a contributing factor to the mass deaths. In such instances, drifting microorganisms sink to the seafloor and consume most of the water’s oxygen, making it hard for the fish to survive.

Daisuke Imura, a local official from the Ministry of the Environment, said similar cases have occurred in the prefecture over the past few years but never on such a large scale. According to Imura, it is unclear whether climate change impacted the fish stock, but rising temperatures have had a clear effect on land. This year has seen less snowfall than usual. Local authorities urged people not to eat the beached fish and carried out beach cleanups over the weekend.