So apparently it’s been like this for a couple of days but I only noticed it today. Pretty much all the river from Zhonghe to Xindian and beyond is full of dead fish. I would believe that pretty much all fish there are dead now. I’ve seen some workers trying to clean / collect dead fish from the river and I guess they’ve been doing so since a day or two ago, so the amount of dead fish is incredible. The odor is not unnoticeable either.
I guess some motherfucker at a big company has flushed the toilet and now we all can enjoy the results of their piece of shit mentality. I really hope that:
this is fully investigated
the company responsible for this pays the consequences and helps to restore the biodiversity that is now gone
they prohibit fishing for a couple of years in this and surrounding areas
they run inspections in all potentially polluting companies
Yeah, it could be a really strange algae or bacteria bloom, but I don’t think so. Also it could be me but the water looked strangely darker than usual (and it’s never been exactly clear waters…).
I wanted to ask online how to report this but it’s already on FB and given that cleaning activities have started I guess the local authorities already know. However something makes me unsure about the points 1 to 4 above.
I think it’s pretty normal (as normal goes in a polluted urban environment, maybe common is a better word) and results from a lack of oxygen in the river.
Man, what I saw today is far from being normal. I’ve seen things like this but at a smaller scale and they’ve been doing cleanup work for a while before I saw it. This time something else has happened.
Yes, normal. So much so wiki mentions it : Tamsui River - Wikipedia “The Tamsui River is heavily polluted by both raw sewage and industrial pollution from illegal industry.” besides wiki, locals will tell you this from 15 years ago till today and tell never ever be clean. I saw water report a few years the toxic content of the river was very high. That being said fish and life do live in the river and as you see , from time to time fish die but enough do live to keep some life in the river.
Yeah I don’t know. That does sound strange. I saw a video on YT yesterday that talked about strange crow behavior being noticed in China during the lockdown. It was SCMP video.
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if that was linked to something strange with Covid-19. At the beginning, US MSM said kids and young folks weren’t at risk, now five or so have died from Kawasaki disease that is related to Covid-19.
I would say don’t rule it out but don’t run around with a tin foil hat on too
Well what was in the pics was nothing I would be really really alarmed. I would be alarmed but nothing like " oh snap, maybe this is an omen of the end times" sort of alarm.
Assuming Google Translate has it right, those articles say the deaths are due to lack of oxygen (from higher temperature and low rainfall), and that pollution counts aren’t particularly high.
I’ve seen mass fish die-offs like that a couple of other times over the decade or so that I’ve lived here. However, “Oh, all the fish die off every few years” may be more worrying than “Yup, this die-off is unique.”
Yeah, to me that’s not having the desired effect of “oh, well, if that’s the case I don’t care anymore”.
Also I know that mass fish deaths like this can happen due to “natural” causes but this time I just find it hard to believe it. But I’m not a biologist and would appreciate serious insights from someone who knows what it’s happening.
If there’s a lack of oxygen in the water that’s probably thanks to all the shit dumped there.
It’s generally caused by some other organism soaking it all up - algae, bacteria, etc - and that’s usually due to humans dumping nutrients into the river. Fertilizers can do it. So can sewage. All those new buildings going up around Danshui still discharge their sewage directly into the river, AFAIK, despite some vague mumblings about building a treatment plant.
High temperatures might be making things worse because the concentration of oxygen in water is inversely proportional to temperature; possible also that there is some mesophilic microorganism out there that thrives under those conditions.
It really does baffle me that Taiwan can be so civilized in some ways and utterly backward in others.
