ZAHEDAN — Three tons of “rotting” sardines were among thousands of dead fish from the Oman Sea that have washed onto Iran’s southern coast in recent days, in and around the port of Konarak.
Local fishermen have blamed trawlers — the vast nets that sweep the sea floor in industrial fishing — and have urged authorities to investigate amid the spreading “stench in the area, the semi-official Mehr agency reported.
One fisherman told the agency that trawlers destroy “the entire sea floor” and were gradually pushing local fish stocks toward extinction. But the fisheries head for the province of Sistan-Baluchestan, Mohsen Ali Golshani, insisted that no trawler “was active in the region,” and that they were not allowed to fish within eight miles of the coast anyway.
The dead fish are in any case too small for their nets, he told Mehr. He said tests so far had shown “no sign of poisoning or pollution that would have killed this amount of fish,” and authorities were perplexed for now. “Unfortunately, for unknown reasons, three tons of sardines have died in this region.”
Photo: Iranian boats at Konarak port — Amirhossein Nikroo
