Cage-farmed fish die en masse in Da Nang river

On July 17, owners of cage fish farms along the Co Co River in Da Nang’s Khue My Ward, Ngu Hanh Son District, woke to find their fish had died in huge numbers.

Huynh Van Hung, 45, said he had noticed fish from his farms skimming the surface of the water and gasping for air on July 16.

The fish started dying early the next morning and it took only until noon for the majority of the farms’ population to have been wiped out, producing a foul smell over the entire area as their bodies began decomposing, Hung said.

Hung owns five cage farms in the river, each housing around 3,000 red tilapias.

“There are two metric tons of red tilapias in each of my cages that cost me over VND300 million [US$13,200] to raise them to their current size,” Hung said. “Now it’s all gone. How am I supposed to pay off my loans?”.

At the cage farms of 40-year-old Nguyen Tam Tri, the few surviving fish have been separated, while the dead fish are being sold to a local animal food factory to minimize the damage.

Tri said he had also lost over five tons of fish, translating to a financial loss of over VND160 million ($7,000).

Along Da Nang’s Co Co River are hundreds of cage fish farms owned by 31 households in the neighborhood, who mostly raise red tilapias, rabbit fish, cobias and spotted scats.

According to local farm owners, Monday was the first time in many years they had seen fish die in such large numbers.

A nearby water treatment plant is suspected of dumping wastewater into the river, causing the deaths.

Nguyen Van Tien, head of the Natural Resources and Environment Division of Ngu Hanh Son District, said district officials had accompanied a team of specialists from the provincial Center for Monitoring Environmental Resources to collect water samples from the affected areas.

The samples would undergo lab tests to determine the cause of fish deaths, and results can be expected in a few days, Tien said.