Millions of fish in floating cages died suddenly this week in Lake Toba, the biggest lake in Indonesia. E. Naibaho, a local aquafarmer, noticed the fish in his floating pens moving in an odd manner in the days leading up to the incident. The water had become cloudy as well. When he and his workers went to feed the fish on the morning of Aug. 24, none of them could be seen rising to the surface. They tried adding
oxygen to the water, but it didn’t work. Before the long the fish began floating to the surface, dead. “My capital is gone,” Naibaho said. “Hundreds of millions of rupiah.” Another farmer, M. Nadeak, estimated the total losses for all the farmers at 5 billion rupiah ($342,000). “Our economy is disturbed,” he said. “That’s going to create social problems.” It was the second mass fish kill in as many years in the lake, which is located in North Sumatra. In 2016, millions of fish also turned up dead. READ MORE
