I was waiting to go on the ferry from Hongkou to Pudong when I saw a group of three men fishing. It’s a nice sight on a sunny Sunday but then I looked down into the water. I wasn’t the only one. Other people were looking into the water too.
What I saw there were turtles floating, some belly-up, clearly dead and some near death, their legs barely moving, struggling to breathe.
How had these poor animals got into the river? Had they been thrown there? Why were there so many in one place.
And then there were the fish, floating on the surface too, glinting silver in the sun, but floating alongside plastic lids and rotten wood, weed and plastic bottles.
It’s bad enough to see the suffering of marine life but to look up onto the dock and see people fishing in this water, it shocking.
I assume they are going to throw back whatever they catch. After all, who would want to eat anything from the waters of the Huangpu river, heavy with the weight of dead and decaying animals.
