Hundreds of Thousands of Fish Die in Vietnam After Intense Heatwave

Hundreds of thousands of fish have died in a 300-acre reservoir in Vietnam. The mass die off was caused by abnormally high temperatures across Southeast Asia.

Throughout April, the south of Vietnam was hammered by drought and obscenely hot weather. Farmers struggled to keep their crops from dying as temperatures rose well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

According to AFP, water levels in the reservoir dropped drastically, becoming too shallow for most of the animals in it to survive.

Now, locals are not only battling the seemingly insurmountable task of removing what’s estimated to be 200 tons of dead fish, but the horrendous smell that comes with it.

“Our life has been turned upside down over the past 10 days because of the smell,” Nghia, a resident from the province’s Trang Bom district, told AFP.

Photos show the reservoir nearly empty, with the mud that’s usually submerged cracked and drying around a few muddy puddles. The body of water is important to the people of the nearby Trang Bom and Vinh Cuu districts, being used to water crops. When the drought first began to affect the crops, officials redirected water intended for the reservoir in an attempt to help farmers living downstream.

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