A fish farm located in the north off Changi and Sembawang has launched an online crowdfunding campaign to receive donations after 80 percent of its fish stock died due to the recent plankton bloom.

Click on picture to go to fund raising site

News of the fishes dying en masse in the farm occurred at the same time as thousands of fishes and marine life washed up dead on Pasir Ris beach on Feb. 28, 2015.

A video posted on Ah Hua Kelong's Facebook page shows the shocking extent of the losses:

The Straits Times reported on March 1 that about 50 fish farms are affected this time, with losses for each farm to be between S$50,000 to S$100,000.

The target for the month-long donation campaign is to raise about S$27,000 (US$20,000) to prevent the farm from closing down.

Ah Hua Kelong specialises in farming grouper, sea bass and golden pomfret, as well as harvest flower crabs and large mussels.

In their appeal for public funds on donation platform Indiegogo, the fish farm wrote:

We Are Offshore Farmers From Singapore. On the 28/2/15, we lost 80% the fishes we had to environmental crisis known as Plankton bloom. The Loss is immense.

We are on the verge of losing the workers, the farm and everything we have and it is not just because of broken supply but because of the news and speculations.

The news and speculations doesn’t help at all. They are creating panic to Singaporean on whether the fishes are safe to eat or not. But the fact is, we dont sell dead fishes. We still have reaming 20% of live healthy fishes which we saved by transferring them away from troubled water and we are still selling that. On top of that, we have friends from other farms and fisherman from all over Singapore helping to supply us fishes temporarily so we don’t break the demand chain.

We are not asking for much. We hope to raise enough to only help us pay off expense for at least 3 months since now both demand and supply are in the ditch. Your donation will help buy us some time to get back on our feet while we venture new ways to finance the farm.

We shall make this note again, we are still selling healthy and safe to eat fishes which we have transferred them other farms thus do visit our website www.ahhuakelong if you wish to order some seafood.

So far, the donation drive has raised S$3,091 (US$2,268) within one day after the fish farm made an appeal on its Facebook page, which appears to have a loyal fan base.

Fishes dying in large numbers this time of the year is not unusual as something similar happened around the same time last year, where thousands of fishes in the eastern part of Singapore and Pulau Ubin washed up dead.

It was explained then that the cloudless dry weather caused temperatures in the body of water in the narrow Johor Straits to rise, causing algae to bloom, which made the water environment oxygen-deficient.

This has been corroborated by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA). The deaths have been attributed to gill damage caused by plankton. Lab tests conducted so far did not detect biological toxins in the fish and fish from local farms remains safe to eat, AVA said.

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All photos via Sean Yap Pasir Ris Beach mass deaths Feb 2015 Facebook

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