. Earth Science News .
Up To One Million Fish Found Dead In Thai River

illustration only
by Staff Writers
Bangkok (AFP) Mar 13, 2007
Hundreds of thousands of farmed fish have been found dead in one of Thailand's key rivers, the fisheries department said Tuesday, prompting fears that factories were polluting the waterway. Parts of the central provinces of Ang Thong and Ayutthaya along the Chao Phraya river were officially declared disaster zones Tuesday, after the fish started dying there on Sunday night.

Officials said they were still trying to determine what had caused the deaths of up to one million caged tubtim fish, a type of tilapia, at different locations along the river about 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Bangkok.

Jaranthada Karnsasuta, director general of the fisheries department, said a sudden lack of oxygen in the water killed the fish.

"Oxygen in water is very poor. Some reported zero to 0.5 percent of oxygen in the water, while fish need more than three percent to survive," he told AFP.

He said they were currently investigating two possible explanations -- that a sugar boat which capsized earlier this month released toxic byproducts into the river, or that upstream factories had polluted the waterway.

Local villagers and farmers suspect that factories, including one that produces the food additive monosodium glutamate, had released untreated water into the Chao Phraya, which flows down to the capital Bangkok, Jaranthada said.

It was less likely to have been caused by the capsized boat, he said, as the accident happened March 3 and the fish would have been affected earlier.

The Ministry of Agriculture will compensate fish farmers for their losses, which total about 40 million baht (1.3 million dollars), Jaranthada said.

An official in Ang Thong told AFP that the public health ministry had reassured him that the dead fish were not poisonous to humans, but added that they would be buried rather than entering the food chain.

Jaranthada said that the quality of water on the affected stretch of the Chao Phraya was improving after the irrigation department released clean water from an upstream dam.

Source: Agence France-Presse

Email This Article

Related Links
Our Polluted World and Cleaning It Up
The latest farming technology and science news

Indefinite Donor Accord To Preserve World Rice Varieties
Manila (AFP) March 12, 2007
The Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust and the International Rice Research Institute agreed Monday to spend 600,000 dollars a year in perpetuity to protect thousands of varieties of rice. The agreement, described by Philippines-based IRRI as the first of its kind in the history of modern agricultural research, will benefit the IRRI-run Genetic Resources Center, which houses more than 100,000 samples of rice and is the biggest and most important such collection in the world.







  • Indonesia Allots One Billion Dollars To Prevent Floods
  • Relief Flows Into Indonesia Quake Area As Death Toll Revised Down
  • Global Disaster Bill Declines In 2006 Says Swiss Re
  • Death And Destruction After Powerful Indonesia Quake

  • Climate Shifts And The Probability Of Randomness
  • EU Summit Seeks Unity On Tackling Global Warming
  • Banning New Coal Power Plants Will Slow Warming
  • The U.N.'s War On Global Warming

  • Space Scientists To Take The Pulse Of Planet Earth
  • Climate Change View Clearer With New Oceans Satellite
  • Satellite Scientists Set To Descend On Hobart
  • CSIRO Imagery Shows Outer Great Barrier Reef At Risk From River Plumes

  • Unlocking The Secrets Of High-Temperature Superconductors
  • China Bans New Small Coal-Based Power Generators
  • Progress Made in Biomass-to-Biofuels Conversion Process
  • Wen Says China Must Stop Wasting Energy

  • Genome Sequence Shows What Makes Bacteria Dangerous For Troops In Iraq
  • A Year Of Added Life More Valuable For The Young
  • Researchers Reconstruct Spread Of Bird Flu From China
  • Troubling Trends In AIDS Cases

  • Remote Sheep Population Resists Genetic Drift
  • Social Tolerance Allows Bonobos To Outperform Chimpanzees On A Cooperative Task
  • Why Do Birds Migrate
  • Some Corals Might Be Able To Fight The Heat

  • Bacterium Could Treat PCBs Without The Need For Dredging
  • Asian Pollution Linked To Stronger Pacific Storm System
  • Canada's Oil Sands To Keep Polluting
  • As An Economy Blossoms An Ancient Capital Suffocates

  • Getting On Your Nerves And Repairing Them
  • These Legs Were Made for Fighting Not Just Climbing Over You
  • Could Baby Boomers Be Approaching Retirement In Worse Shape Than Their Predecessors
  • Time For TV Detox

  • The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2006 - SpaceDaily.AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA PortalReports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additionalcopyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement