Shafaq News

A rare eyeless fish still survives in Al-Anbar's stable groundwater while mass die-offs spread across Iraq's rivers, marshes, and farms. The contrast frames the country's central failure: not that its fish are dying, but that Iraq often cannot say why.

The evidence points to no single cause. Water scarcity and oxygen depletion are documented in some areas; pollution is suspected but unconfirmed in others; salinity, disease, and destructive fishing add further pressure. In most cases, the testing needed to isolate one factor from another was never done, and the diagnostic gap, more than any single toxin or drought, is what leaves each die-off unresolved.

The losses come amid a steep contraction in the industry. Iraqi Fish Producers Association head Iyad al-Talibi told Shafaq News that annual production has fallen from more than 900,000 metric tons in 2018 to an estimated 250,000–300,000 today. That collapse —roughly two-thirds of national output in under a decade— turns the issue from an environmental concern into a broader food-security problem.

The Green Iraq Observatory estimated on August 8 that more than 1,000 metric tons of fish had been lost nationwide during 2026.

Maysan: Scarcity Suspected, Lab Evidence Lacking

Maysan offers the most consistent case for linking deaths to falling water levels, though the evidence rests largely on official attribution rather than measurement.

Fish began dying in the Al-Amshan Canal in early August after water releases dropped sharply, according to the provincial council's Agriculture and Water Committee. Environmental activist Mortada al-Janubi attributed deaths in the Al-Ezz River and central marshes to receding water and falling oxygen. Maysan lawmaker Duha al-Sadkhan told Shafaq News that hundreds of tons were lost in Al-Mejar Al-Kabir district, with damage estimated at three billion to five billion Iraqi dinars ($2.28M – $3.80M).

The stronger evidence is historical. In August 2024, testing after extensive mortality in Al-Huwaizeh Marsh, on the Iraq-Iran border, identified critically low water levels and oxygen depletion as the principal factors; environmental expert Ahmed Saleh put mortality there near 95 percent. That episode was measured. The 2026 Al-Amshan deaths have been attributed to the same mechanism, but Shafaq News found no publicly available testing confirming it. The distinction matters: a plausible explanation is not necessarily a proven cause.

The World Bank warned in 2022 that dams, water abstraction, and wetland drainage were cutting river flows and threatening inland fisheries. For fish held at high density in cages or ponds, reduced flow compounds the danger: poor circulation drives oxygen stress and disease.

Wasit: Pollution Is Credible But Unproven

If Maysan points to scarcity, the April die-off in Wasit remains genuinely unsettled, with attention fixed on whether contaminated water moving from the Diyala into the Tigris caused the losses.

The Green Iraq Observatory attributed the episode to untreated sewage and industrial waste carried downstream after releases from Hamrin Dam rose, and it documented more than 20 cases of poisoning and skin injury requiring hospital treatment. Al-Talibi blamed sewage entering the Tigris through the Diyala and estimated that about 95 percent of Kut's floating cages were affected.

But no public laboratory data reviewed by Shafaq News reported the measurements that would separate pollution from oxygen depletion, infection, or several causes acting together: dissolved oxygen, ammonia, heavy metals. Iraq's 2018 mass mortality shows why that gap matters: an international investigation concluded that Koi Herpesvirus was the principal cause, with poor water quality and overcrowding raising susceptibility rather than triggering the deaths. The obvious culprit was not the killer.

Pollution remains a real threat regardless. A World Bank document in May 2026 estimated that more than 70 percent of sewage in Iraq's urban areas enters rivers untreated. Water Resources Minister Muthanna al-Tamimi announced legal action in July against parties accused of polluting the Tigris and Diyala, citing joint inspections with the Environment Ministry. Months later, no public information identifies the defendants or indicates whether the cases have advanced.

The South: Salt Changes The Habitat

The same loss of freshwater that starves fish of oxygen creates a second pressure farther south, where weaker river flows let saltwater push deeper into the Shatt Al-Arab and connected wetlands.

A 2025 study by researchers from the universities of Basrah and Babylon recorded a salinity of 29.9 practical salinity units in Al-Hammar Marsh, where every fish sampled at one station during the intrusion was a marine species. At Abu Al-Khaseeb, at 25 units, marine species made up 82.8 percent of recorded abundance. The findings do not name salinity as a cause of the recent die-offs, but they show how sharply declining flows can rewrite which fish a habitat can hold.

Read more: Hawizeh Marsh faces catastrophic fish die-off

Illegal Fishing Keeps Removing Stock

Destructive fishing also continues to strip breeding populations already weakened by water loss.

Iraq's Law No. 48 of 1976 bans poisons, explosives, chemicals, and electrical devices, with penalties up to imprisonment and confiscation of boats and catches. Yet the Supreme Judicial Council found electrofishing, explosives, pesticides, and illegal nets still in use in 2024 and urged consolidating provisions scattered across separate laws, a legislative fix that has not come.

The World Bank likewise flagged electrofishing and breeding-season fishing as persistent, poorly enforced threats. Agriculture Ministry spokesperson Qusay al-Hattab told Shafaq News that teams document violations with GPS equipment, but no public nationwide figures show how many were recorded in 2025 or 2026, or how many led to convictions.

Read more: Death in the current: Pollution decimates Iraq’s river ecosystems

Millions Released, Survival Untracked

Against these combined pressures, the government's most visible response is restocking. The Agriculture Ministry released about 155 million fish in the 2026 season, al-Hattab said —up from roughly 95 million the year before— including more than 11 million into Anah Lake in Al-Anbar in April alone. The Animal Resources Directorate produced more than 1.5 million native fish between 2023 and 2025, among them Binni, Qattan, and Shabout.

What happens next is unknown. No published data reviewed by Shafaq News show how many released fish survive to maturity or form breeding populations. The releases are countable and immediate; the water they enter is often the same unmeasured water where fish have been dying. Restocking may replace some of the losses without addressing the conditions behind them, while no publicly available data show whether the program is producing sustainable fish populations.

That is the shape of the problem. In Maysan, insufficient water and oxygen depletion. In Wasit, pollution that is plausible but unconfirmed. In the south, salt is reshaping habitats. Behind all of them, disease that has turned catastrophic before and illegal fishing that never stopped. The investigation finds no single nationwide killer, and, more often, no test capable of naming the local one.

Until that changes, Iraq risks replacing dead fish faster than it can explain why they died, treating the losses without fully understanding their causes. In Al-Anbar's caves, meanwhile, the blind fish endures in something increasingly scarce elsewhere: stable conditions.

Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.