According to a group of fishermen in Hang Dong District’s Khun Kong community, they are now selling dead tilapia fish at only 20 baht per kilogram, just so they can receive some of their investments back after severe storms killed most of their fish.
According to a representative of the group, the fish died under the deluge of hail earlier this week and the solvable fish had to be sold off very cheaply while most of them had begun to rot and had to be given away to make compost.
”The reason isn’t in fact the hail itself,” said Thanawat Norjai, one of the fishermen in the community, “Our tilapia are kept in a floating basket and when the rains came so heavily it unleashed all of the sewage and filth that had been accumulating in the pipes and systems. When it all finally spread into the Ping River the lack of oxygen was what killed our fish. I had 18 fishing stations and have lost about 80% of them, or around 30,000 fish. In total I have lost half a million baht. When I contacted government authorities, they sold me that it was not their problem, even though it was their lack of management that lead to this.”
