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Conservationist Christian Sahm: "Every thought of an animal species"
Photo: Hannes Schrader / Der Spiegel
Last year, Christian Sahm will say at the end of this excursion, last year he still said: »If nobody in Poland fishes in the Oder anymore, we will have the end of the world.«
Now the time has come, at least if you take it literally.
It started a week ago, on August 9th.
The phones of nature conservationists from the Frankfurt an der Oder region suddenly rang: it was the call of fishermen, saying dead fish were swimming on the Oder.
Christian Sahm's phone also rang.
At first, he says, he didn't think anything of it - it can happen that fish die in the river when the water is low and the heat is high.
But then more and more calls came.
So he sat down in his dark blue Dacia Logan, drove to the Oder himself, and there he saw it: the whole river was full of dead fish.
Nobody fishes here anymore.
Not in Germany - and not in Poland either.
Mr Sahm, what did you think when you saw that?
"It's the apocalypse." Now, a week later, the Federal Minister for the Environment and dozens of institutions are concerned about the death of fish - water samples are pipetted and analyzed in laboratories, fish carcasses are gutted and examined.
Politicians are calling for clarification, and there is a lot of anger at the Polish authorities, who have probably known since the end of July that something was wrong with the river.
The cause of death is still unclear.
The dead fish are a political issue, that's one thing.
The Oder should »work«
The other is what remains after death.
The best way to understand the loss is to talk to someone like Christian Sahm.
He is a zoo keeper, a stocky man with small brown eyes, he sits on the environmental advisory board of the city of Frankfurt/Oder.
He is 48 years old.
And an or-ultra.
If you call him, he suggests going to the river immediately.
"I want the Oder to affect you." He takes his net with him.
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Christian Sahm, 48, on the banks of the Oder
Photo:
Hannes Schrader / The Mirror
Early Monday evening he drives his Dacia along a country road along the Oderwiesen.
Again and again he brakes the car suddenly, points to a line in the sky and calls out: »There, a black kite!« He talks about bird species with such speed that a layman can hardly keep up.
He is enthusiastic about bee-eaters or flocks of starlings with more than 1000 birds.
Ornithologists from North Rhine-Westphalia occasionally called him a weirdo when he told them what species and in what numbers he observed them here.
He takes that as a compliment.
Still, he says, he doesn't always tell everything he sees here.
Because hardly anyone would believe it anyway.
»This is the most beautiful region in Germany.
The variety of species is second to none.« He is particularly familiar with birds,
more on the subject
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Sahm parks the car by a fence that leads up to the Oderdamm.
He gets the landing net from the trunk, his two fluffy dogs jump out of the car.
He trudges up the dam, and when he gets to the top, he yells "WOAAAHHH" and spreads his arms.
In front of him are the Oder meadows, here the reeds are swaying, there are a few trees in the meadows, behind is the Oder.
Now the meadows are dry and accessible.
When the river overflows, they are under water.
Cranes live here, Nordic geese rest on their way south, and even fish swim in the knee-deep water.
"There's such an ommesse swimming here where you went for a walk yesterday!" calls Sahm and gestures with his hands at a fish one meter long.
“Flap-flap-flap-flap it works!” He shakes the palm of his hand as if it were a fish fin.
Sahm's small brown eyes shine.
Then he makes his way through the dry reeds.
Thank God no death carpet with birds
The closer he gets to shore, the stronger the stink of rotting fish.
As he stepped onto the bank, a flock of birds rose: »Peebitzer!«, calls Sahm.
Great white egrets crane their necks on the other bank.
The birds eat the carcasses of the fish that are still here.
The good news, says Sahm, is that no dead birds have been found so far, so the fish carcasses don't seem to be poisonous to them.
"Otherwise we'd have a carpet of death here with thousands of birds."
Sahm scans the shore with his landing net.
There is a cracking sound under his boots: thousands of mussel and snail shells are lying here, mussel meat is swimming everywhere.
What you know from the sea - mussel shells on the shore - does not actually occur here.
The mussels and snails filter the water.
“They died immediately and were the first to die.” Sahm says the number of dead mussels and snails probably far exceeds that of the fish.
A dead river like this is still.
Only the wind rustles through the reeds and tiny flies buzz around the carcasses.
In the past few days, says Sahm, he has repeatedly come to the Oder.
He looked to see what had died.
He is particularly concerned about the gold wolffish, a species that is rare in Germany. "I've seen one dead fish per meter of river here," he says.
He points to the river, about 100 meters long: "30 to 40 dead fish were swimming on the surface here," he says.
He didn't count the species they found.
There were too many.
more on the subject
Extreme low water: Brandenburg closes locks in the Spreewald – emergency fishing possible
Environmental disaster in the Oder: "No one knows what's in the dead fish" An interview by Verena Töpper
Fish deaths in the Oder: Environment Minister Lemke criticizes the lack of cooperation with Poland
"There's still something alive!" calls Sahm and throws his landing net into the water.
"Ah no.
Just dying,' he says.
He pulls a finger-long fish out of the net, it twitches in his hand, the scales shimmer golden-grey in the light of the evening sun.
A young zander, Sahm suspects.
He puts the fish back in the water, it paddles helplessly with its fins and drifts away.
Sahm looks after him in dismay.
»end time mood«
A lot now depends on how much water the river carries, i.e. how much water is diluted that is currently in the river.
He believes it could take up to 15 years for the Oder to regenerate to pre-disaster levels, depending on what caused the environmental disaster.
Sahm trudges to another spot on the bank, where an asp that is more than a meter long is floating.
The carcass is intact.
"The birds don't bother because they find so many small fish, they don't bother doing the work," he says.
A similarly sized asp swims a few meters away.
Sahm puts his hands on his hips and looks out at the water.
»End of time mood.«
Each of his thoughts is now on an animal species.
The otters for example.
"You can usually see them here, playing in the water, rolling on their backs, stomachs," says Sahm, moving like an otter frolicking in the water.
"What are they doing now?
If there are no fish, you won't have any otters either.” And what will the birds do when all the carcasses have been eaten or decomposed?
Sahm turns around and pushes his way back through the reeds onto the dike.
Then it buzzes over his head, three little birds fly over him, they trill softly and lively: "There, bee-eater!" he calls, "Take a picture, take a picture, take a picture immediately!" But then the bee-eaters are already gone, disappeared on the horizon .