Cambodia's Tonle Sap lake is suffering its worst fishing season in memory, with potentially devastating effects for millions in Southeast Asia.
2019 was the second-warmest year since scientists began taking temperatures in 1880, government scientists from NASA and NOAA announced Wednesday.ever recorded, according to the Mekong River Commission, an intergovernmental agency that advocates for responsible management of the river’s resources.that had been submerged for decades after a dam was built reappeared on the sandy riverbed.
The Mekong River flows through the northeastern Thailand province of Nong Khai on Oct. 31, 2019. Last year, the river level reached record lows across northern Thailand due to drought and a recently opened dam hundreds of miles upstream. Water gushes north back into the lake, along with fish, larvae, organic matter and sediment that produce an explosion of life: an annual fish catch of roughly 500,000 tons, greater than the yield of all the rivers and lakes in North America.Because of the backflow, the lake rises by as much as 26 feet until the fall, when it starts to drain again, an event that Cambodians mark with a three-day festival of boat races and fireworks.
In Phat Sanday, a village of blue-painted wooden houseboats at the southern edge of the lake, the local government administrator records the high-water mark every year on the concrete stilts that his office sits on, two stories above the lakebed. The 2019 mark was 10 feet below normal. “You have to work twice as long to catch the same fish,” said Heng Mono, a local administrator in Phat Sanday, Cambodia.Heab Nom recalled her childhood on the lake, when she could drop a net in the water and pull up an armload of mud carp, known as trey riel.
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