A marine mystery that began in Papua New Guinea last December is refusing to end. Dead fish have been washing onto the shores of New Ireland Province for six months, hundreds of people have fallen ill, and fresh reports in early June pointed to the toll rising once more.
The numbers gathered by local volunteers are stark: 3,451 dead sea creatures recorded over just five days at Manggai Village, drawn from more than 15 species. Roughly 750 residents have reported sickness — burns, breathing trouble and stomach illness — after eating fish or simply standing in the shallows. In the absence of a strong official response, much of the monitoring has fallen to conservation groups on the ground.
One of them is Ailan Awareness, founded by John Aini, who has watched the reefs that sustain his community turn poisonous. He has described fish "gasping for air" with "discolored and bulging eyes and green flesh," and "a sulfuric smell near reefs."
"We rely on coral reefs to sustain our daily livelihoods. The government has literally said nothing," Aini said.
The damage runs straight through the islands' food supply. Martha Piwas, a community leader on the affected coast, said the ocean had become a threat rather than a larder.
"Families can no longer rely on the ocean for food. Mothers cannot feed their children fish anymore. People are getting sick. And we still don't know why," she said, describing villagers "going into the water barefoot, not knowing it will burn their skin."
"At this point in time it's really hard for me to tell you what chemical it is because we're looking at all options," Wong said. He told reporters his office hoped "to come up with a solution within the next week."
The list of suspects is long and unresolved: a toxic algal bloom, run-off of agricultural or industrial chemicals, and geothermal venting from the seabed. Deep-sea mining has, for now, been discounted as a direct trigger.
That uncertainty has bred frustration. Rebecca Marigu, a journalist who founded Siro Media, said the wider world had moved on while the islands had not.
"For us islanders, we've been people who have always depended on the ocean. The ocean is our life," she said. "Now that [the government] thinks attention has moved on, they've gone quiet again. It hasn't moved on. We are all still waiting for answers."
University of Rhode Island environmental social scientist Jessica Vandenberg said the episode followed a well-worn pattern.
"The people most affected by pollution are not the ones who are responsible for producing it," she said.
For the people of New Ireland — most of whom fish to eat, not for sport — the warning that opened the summer still stands: leave the catch in the water until someone can explain what is killing it.
