Thousands of fish found dead in Mansar lake

Mansar (Samba), February 10

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The tranquil waters of Mansar lake in Samba district have turned into a somber scene as nearly 3,000 fish have perished in the last few days, causing distress and concern among local residents and administration, officials said.

The Wildlife department attributed the cause of the huge number of fishes to the consumption of hailstones during recent rains, they said. “They have died within a few days during rains. They probably mistook hail for flour balls and consumed them. People feed them with flour balls on a daily basis for religious purposes,” said Dheeraj Rampal, block officer, Wildlife department, Mansar.

There was a hailstorm in the Mansar area on February 1, he said. The officials put the figures of dead fish at 2,500 to 3,000. In the past years too, fish have died of cold or oxygen deficiency, he said. Hundreds of dead fish were found floating on the surface of Mansar, the largest freshwater lake in the Shivalik mountain range of Jammu and Kashmir.

Protected under the Ramsar Convention, shocked locals and tourists have been witnessing dead carp fish floating on the water surface and near the lake banks for the past one week.

“We woke up to see a large number of dead fish floating in the lake on February 2. It was a heartening scene. We are concerned about it,” Dina Nath, a local resident, said.

The water body, some 45 kilometers from Jammu and falling in Samba district, is a popular tourist destination attracting nearly a million visitors every year.

Expressing concern, locals reported the ongoing phenomenon, stating, for the past few days, they have been witnessing a continuous die-off, with hundreds of fish already lost, and the removal process is ongoing.

Pankaj Sharma, a local, who runs a shop on the banks of Mansar lake, said fishes started dying since the first of February. “We have been engaged in removing the dead fish since February 1. We will continue to remove all the dead fish. It is a holy place connected with Sheshnag and has reference in Mahabharat,” Sharma said.

Efforts by the Wildlife Department to mitigate the situation are underway, with personnel diligently removing and burying the dead fish to prevent pollution and potential epidemic.

“Every day we are removing 4 to 5 trollies of dead fish from the lake. The more we remove dead fish from the lake, the more they come up. We don’t know the total number of dead fish but the task to remove them has been going on for the past one week. We are burying them away from the lake,” said Wildlife department labourer Room Raj.

The officials also pointed out other reasons for the death of fish and said that intense cold and natural factors may have led to decreased oxygen levels in the water, resulting in the fish fatalities.