PLANTATION KEY -- A small mountain of putrid, decaying fish left at a shuttered oceanside fish house was smelly enough last week to catch the attention of local officials and to run customers away from nearby businesses.

"It's been terrible," said Dipak Magan, owner of the Keys and Tropic Vista motels, which sit just down the Old Highway from the offending Plantation Fisheries building. "We've been losing customers the past few days on a routine basis because of the smell."

A hazardous materials crew worked most of last week cleaning up the mess, which also drew authorities to the old fish house, located at mile marker 90 just south of Tavernier Creek.

Police, fire and health department officials were first tipped off about the rancid odor last Monday, several days after it had begun wafting through the neighborhood, Made 2 Order restaurant owner Frank Hughes said.

"We suffered because nobody could sit outside," said Hughes, whose business is two doors down from the fish house.

When Islamorada fire officials went looking for the source of the smell they found a walk-in cooler full of dead bait fish as well as several inches of soupy fish decay on the floor, Capt. Geo Toth said.

By last Thursday the crew from hazmat company Global Disaster Recovery had filled dozens of large outdoor plastic bags with the decay. The smell was so strong that a Free Press reporter standing just outside the fish house became queasy almost instantly even while holding his nose.

Hazmat workers said they had discarded enough fish to cover five or six wooden container pallets waist high.

Global Disaster Recovery owner Paul Sweeney said the crew might have to repaint the interior of the building to seal the smell.

By last Tuesday village of Islamorada officials had cited building owner Orion Bank for housing hazardous materials. Orion vice president Jeff Beuttel, who village Building Director Gerry Albertson said had been on the scene to deal with the matter, did not respond to phone calls.

But nearby business owners say that Orion wasn't the real culprit. Until a few weeks ago the building had been occupied by a tenant, fish distributor Matt Mallidis.

In September Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission Officers cited Mallidis for littering after an employee at the fish house dumped a sizable quantity of dead shrimp into the canal that runs behind the building.

This time around, the bait was left on dry land, where it rotted away. Reached by the Free Press last week, Mallidis said he had been gone from the building for more than two weeks. But he declined to talk further.

"I got nothing to say to you," he said.

rsilk@keysnews.com