"Farmers who didn't harvest their fish in October, lost their entire crop," Liu said. "They were hoping that the fish would grow bigger over the winter and then they would be able to get better prices this spring."
Liu, like many other farmers on the marshy lake, turned to fish farming after wild fish began dying out years ago. He said he barely makes ends meet farming fish, mostly carp, but there is no other work for him to do.
With environmental disasters on the rise, and especially following a huge toxic benzene spill on Songhua River in northeast China in November, the government has repeatedly vowed to put an end to the environmental degradation that has come with 25 years of unbridled economic growth.
For Chinese environmentalists and academics who have long called for more environmental protection, cleaning up Baiyangdian Lake has now become a test of China's determination to avoid an environmental crisis and clean up its act.
So far, the government response has been strong with 218 tanneries, paper-making factories and other polluting facilities above the lake shut down, while at least seven environmental protection officials in towns and cities upstream have been fired for allowing the waste water to be released into the lake.
Upstream reservoirs which have hoarded natural runoff water for irrigation and industrial purposes have been ordered to share their water and open flood gates to help dilute the pollution in the lake.
"We have been calling for these kinds of measures for over 10 years," Xu Muqi, director of the Research Center for Animal Ecology And Conservation at the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences, told AFP.
"Baiyangdian, like so many other major Chinese lakes, has been dying a slow death for years.
"The reasons are many. Too many people are competing for scarce water resources, not enough waste water is being treated and global warming has left North China in a drought since 1998."
