Inter Press Service
October 16, 2002

For 7 years fishermen have noticed the Mekong’s unnatural flow, shortly after the first dam upstream in China started operations. In China’s Yunnan province, a cascade of eight dams has been planned since the 1980s.

CHIANG KHONG, Thailand — On a farmstead by the Mekong River, fishermen in Ban Had Krai village in this district in Thailand’s northern Chiang Rai province gathered under the shade of a tree around a television-sized bamboo shrine.

Under the morning sun, the smoke of incense and candles filled the air as well as the smell of cooked chicken, beef, a pig’s head. Chants and shouts invoked the descent of the spirits in rhythmic Lanna or northern Thai music.

“We couldn’t catch any giant catfish last year. Please come and help bring the fish to us this year,” Sao Rattanatrai, the 63-year-old ritual master, said, summoning the spirits.

This scene harks back to the old days when villagers used to do the ‘liang luang’ ritual at the start of the fishing season in mid-April for the giant catfish, a species native to the Mekong region and a delicacy in this part of South-east Asia.

Believing that the big fish, which weigh up to 300 kilograms, are protected by water spirits, they serve the spirits food to seek permission to catch the catfish and blessings on their boats.

The ritual is still very much like the old days, except that fewer people are taking part in it. Boonrian Jinnarat, the 52-year-old head of the village’s Giant Catfish Association, says only 20 people were at this year’s spirit ceremony compared to more than 100 in the past.

No fishermen from Houei Sai village on the opposite bank in Thailand’s neighbor, Laos, came as their guests. They have not come for two years, even though people along the Mekong river have long had similar beliefs and rituals before national boundaries came about.

Like the Thais, Lao fisherfolk believe in asking water spirits to help catch fish. They hold the same ritual of ‘liang luang’, for which the Ban Had Krai villagers had invited them to be their guests.

“The water is not as it used to be,” Boonrian says, explaining the declining participation in the rituals that have come with changes in the Mekong’s flow over the years. “People say China has built dams upstream to control the river.”

In the stretch of river between Thailand’s Ban Had Krai and Laos’ Houei Sai villages, fishermen have been catching giant catfish for more than three decades.

This is the only place along this more than 4,000 kilometer river, which flows from the Tibetan plateau through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, where fishermen still catch giant catfish professionally.

That is because the nearly half-a-kilometer shoal of Don Wang in Laos divides the river, narrowing its channel. Here, the riverbed is flat and composed of gravel — appropriate for laying nets.

Regardless of the boundary set by the French who ruled Laos a century ago, the fishermen have developed a cooperative culture over shared fish resources and a river that belongs to everyone and no one.

It has been seven years since some fishermen noticed the river’s unnatural flow, shortly after the first dam on the Mekong in China started operations.

Since then, their fish catch has gone down as their fishing gear has been unable to adjust to the changes in water levels. If the water levels continue to be unnatural, Boonrian says, villagers will no longer fish and have to find new livelihood.

Hundreds of kilometers upstream in China’s south-western Yunnan province, a cascade of eight dams has been planned since the 1980s to produce some 15,000 megawatts of electricity. Yunnan has a hydroelectric power of some 90,000 megawatts, 23 percent of China’s total.

In China’s 10th national five-year plan for 2001-2005, Yunnan is to accelerate its development of hydroelectric power to keep up with the country’s growing energy needs. The province, through which the Mekong runs, will become China’s biggest hydroelectric power base.

According to a report on the downstream effects of Chinese dams by He Daming and E C Chapman — funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China and the Yunnan commission for science and technology — the first dam of Manwan began generating electricity in mid-1994.

In 1997, the second dam, Dachaoshan, was built and began operations last year. Under construction is the Xiaowan dam, the country’s second largest after the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze River.

In April 1994, Boonrian says, the river water dried up to about a meter in depth, which allowed them to catch only 18 giant catfish compared to 48 the year before. The following year, the Mekong along Chiang Khong district reached its lowest level of 44 centimeters.

“I have lived here for many decades, but that was the first time that I saw the water dry up to the middle of the river,” says Boonrian.

Before the dams were built in 1994, an average of 41 giant catfish were caught annually. Last year, 24 fishing boats tried desperately to catch the fish, to no avail.

For more than 100 years, Ban Had Krai villagers have used their keen observation of nature to catch catfish. Every mid-April, flocks of terns will fly past, signalling the appearance of the fish, usually within 10 days.

Boonrian says the water level then rises, falls and gradually rises up again until June, when it is high enough to flood Don Wang, marking the end of the fishing season.

Rains lure the fish to come. Tracking the consistent change in water levels, the fishermen can predict the river’s condition and current in order to adjust their ‘mong lai’ nylon nets. They can often make their first catch a week later, or at the latest in the first week of May.

This year, a week after the ‘liang luang’ ritual in April, a flock of terns gathered over a  cottage near the river. News of the fish’s arrival was heard from downstream but Don Wang, where the fishermen usually set off in their boats, remained silent.

No one began the season except for 70-year-old Yuen Yongyuen and his nephews. In late April, Yuen held the traditional ritual of ‘liang ruea’, serving offerings to the spirits of his boat in return for blessings and good luck in searching for the fish. But his 33-year-old nephew, Sathit Boonnak was not able to catch giant catfish.

Somchai Pollnikom, head of Chiang Saen’s Hydrographics Centre, says that water levels rose and fell unnaturally, making it difficult to drift nets and catch fish.

No one can be certain of the Mekong’s water levels any more, villagers say.

Chainarong Sretthachau, director of South-east Asia Rivers Network Thailand, says the inconsistent water levels undercuts the villagers’ fishing ability. “The water changes so fast and unpredictably that they can barely catch up,” he says. “Their local knowledge and fishing gear will be useless if this condition persists.” In the first few days of May, only one Thai fishing boat was cruising the desolate river.

This was in sharp contrast to earlier decades, when the catfish season was so busy – and the fish so popular a fare – that Lao and Thai fishermen had disputes because up to 80 boats were patrolling the river at a time.

This year, “the water is abnormal again,” said Boontan Khampha, head of Houei Sai’s Giant Catfish Association. “It’s not worth it to try and catch fish.”

The fishing season ended in mid-May when the water level rose over two meters, making it difficult to catch giant catfish. In the first week of May, only one fish was caught  upstream.

For Boonrian and Boontan, the root of their problems lies far away. “We
have known about the dams in China but we can’t do anything,” said
Boonrian. “They are in China and we can never go there.”

(*This story was written under the Inter Press Service/Rockefeller
media fellowship programme “Our Mekong: A Vision amid Globalization.”)