Nearly two years of care, lost everything overnight
In recent days, along the cage fish farming area on the Bo River, passing through Pho Lai and Niem Pho villages (Quang Dien commune, Hue city), the atmosphere has become heavy as a series of fish cages of people float white.
For many farming households, this is not only property damage but also the entire revenue after nearly two years of investment and care.
Mr. Le Van Duong, residing in Pho Lai village, shared that his family raises about 200 grass carp. The carp are raised from a young age, transferred from a cage to a large cage when they reach about half a kilogram and it takes nearly two years to reach the selling size.
Since buying small finger-sized fingerlings, raising them for nearly two years before preparing to sell, they all died. All capital and effort was poured into the river," Mr. Duong shared.
Not only Mr. Duong's family, Ms. Tran Thi Le, residing in Pho Lai village, also lost almost the entire fish cage with about 200 fish. According to her, traders once scheduled to come to buy, but due to slow consumption market, harvesting was postponed. Before it could be sold, the fish suddenly died en masse.
If it can be sold, it will be about 40 to 50 million VND. Now that the fish are all dead, people can only hope that higher levels will support a little capital to buy seed fish to raise again," Ms. Le said.
Similarly, Ms. Phan Thi Loc's household (same village) said that her family's fish cage also has about 200 fish, each weighing about 3-5kg and it is almost harvest time.
Traders called, but they said they would leave it for a few days. Unexpectedly, the water became suffocating, and the fish floated up and died all. Now the cages are empty, probably having to borrow money from the bank to raise them again," Ms. Loc worried.
According to people in the two villages, the weather was still normal many days ago, but then consecutive rains appeared, and the river water changed, causing fish to lack oxygen and die.
Continue monitoring the water environment
The common point of farming households is that most of them live on cage fish farming combined with agricultural production. After this period of damage, many families no longer have capital to reinvest.
According to the Department of Agriculture and Environment of Hue City, after receiving information about fish deaths, the unit directed the Sub-Department of Fisheries to coordinate with local authorities to inspect the scene.
According to statistics, fish deaths occurred in 79 out of a total of 1,850 cages in Kim Tra ward, Quang Dien commune and Dan Dien commune, accounting for about 3% of the total number of cages, with estimated damage output of about 12 tons.
In which, most grass carp have been raised for 12 - 24 months, reaching a weight of 3.5 - 4kg/fish and reaching harvest size.
Quick inspection results from the Fisheries Sub-Department showed that the initial cause was determined to be localized oxygen deficiency in the early morning. Some households had aerators but the equipment was broken, while many other households were not equipped with aerators and the farming density was quite high, causing the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water to decrease sharply.
Functional agencies request households to collect and destroy all dead fish in accordance with regulations; and at the same time apply technical measures such as leveling cages, creating flow, maintaining aeration from 0-2 am and increasing vitamin and mineral supplementation to improve fish resistance.
Faced with increasingly erratic weather diễn biến, the agricultural sector also recommends that farmers regularly monitor forecast bulletins, proactively plan responses to prolonged heat, extreme rain and the risk of oxygen deficiency in the water environment.
