The fish are believed to have died of poisoning. Unusual mercury and salt concentrations have been found in the water of the river, which is known to be clean.
in Germany, The Oder River, which flows in Poland and the Czech Republic, has been filled with dead fish in places. The situation is so serious that the authorities describe what happened as an environmental disaster.
This is reported by the Reuters news agency. Fish kills have become a problem in Poland and later in Germany.
Riverside residents and anglers began to pay attention to clusters of dead fish at the end of July. There are dead fish of all sizes floating in the river, from a few centimeters long to 30-40 centimeter long ones.
Director of the Polish Water Management Authority Przemyslaw Dacan according to Poland, more than eleven tons of dead fish had been collected by Thursday evening.
The fish are believed to have died of poisoning.
Cause mass deaths are not yet known, but the Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki has speculated that chemical waste might have been released into the water.
German authorities have accused Poland of not warning Germany about the dead fish before they started washing up on shores.
According to Morawiecki, the matter was not reported earlier because the problem was believed to be only in Poland. However, he admitted that the problem was huge.
“The scale of the destruction is very large – large enough that we can say it will be years before the Oder River returns to its natural state,” Morawiecki said on Friday.
“Probably huge amounts of chemical waste were released into the river with full knowledge of its risks and consequences,” he added.
Late on Friday, Morawiecki fired Daca, the director of the water supply authorities, and the director of the General Environmental Inspection Agency Michal Mistrzakbecause the agencies they lead did not react to the incident in time enough.
By Thursday, more than 11 tons of dead fish had been collected in Poland.
Germany’s Minister of the Environment Steffi Lemke said Friday that Polish and German authorities are working hard to determine the cause of the mass fish die-off.
According to the authorities, the fish have probably died from poisoning, but they have not yet managed to identify which substance it is.
According to the authorities, poisoning is the most likely cause, because the oxygen content of the water has been high recently, so the fish are unlikely to have died from lack of oxygen.
A researcher who spoke to the German Deutsche Welle by Christian Wolter according to the ongoing dredging to deepen the riverbed may have released, for example, mercury into the water.
Earlier reports indicated very high levels of mercury in the water, but according to preliminary results published on Friday evening, the water is also unusually salty.
Efforts are being made to collect dead fish out of the river.
Poland intends to erect a barrier in the river, the purpose of which is to collect the dead fish that go with the current. 150 a soldier has also been assigned to help with the cleaning.
Currently, the authorities are waiting for additional test results on heavy metal and mercury levels. Residents have been warned to stay out of the water.
The situation horrifies the locals even more, because the Oder has been considered a fairly clean river in recent years, and forty species of fish live in its waters.
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