About 25 years ago I became acquainted with a gentleman who owned a Chem Lab supply store, catering to the universities, high schools, industrial concerns, and home experimenters; he had no Chemistry background, but a large amount of business savvy. He was just getting started in the aquaculture business, hoping to supply the growing demand in Japan for chemicals controlling algae growth, seaweed, etc. He flew to Tokyo while I knew him. Since then, aquaculture has become an enormous business, with as much as one-half of all the seafood consumed worldwide today grown in controlled environments, ponds and the like. Needless to say, China has become one of the leaders of the "farm-raised" fish industry. Ponds in China have been established which cover SQUARE MILES of area, dedicated to aquaculture, in which huge quantities of fish are raised for both human consumption, and to feed aquaculture operations themselves! A farm-raised tuna fish for example consumes 15 times it's weight in fish and fish products before it is harvested. Gambia, the smallest country in Africa, has been inundated with Chinese aquaculture investment, to it's detriment. "Hike five minutes inland, and you’ll find a more tranquil setting: a wildlife reserve known as Bolong Fenyo. Established by the Gunjur community in 2008, the reserve is meant to protect seven hundred and ninety acres of beach, mangrove swamp, wetland, savannah, and an oblong lagoon. The lagoon, a half mile long and a few hundred yards wide, has been a lush habitat for a remarkable variety of migratory birds as well as humped-back dolphins, epaulet fruit bats, Nile crocodiles, and callithrix monkeys. A marvel of biodiversity, the reserve has been integral to the region’s ecological health—and, with hundreds of birders and other tourists visiting each year, to its economic health, too. But on the morning of May 22, 2017, the Gunjur community discovered that the Bolong Fenyo lagoon had turned a cloudy crimson overnight, dotted with floating dead fish. “Everything is red,” one local reporter wrote, “and every living thing is dead.” Some residents wondered if the apocalyptic scene was an omen delivered in blood. More likely, ceriodaphnia, or water fleas, had turned the water red in response to sudden changes in pH or oxygen levels. Locals soon reported that many of the birds were no longer nesting near the lagoon." "The water contained double the amount of arsenic and forty times the amount of phosphates and nitrates deemed safe." "Pollution at these levels could only have one source: illegally dumped waste from a Chinese fish-processing plant called Golden Lead, which operates on the edge of the reserve." "Golden Lead and the other factories were rapidly built to meet an exploding global demand for fishmeal—a lucrative golden powder made by pulverizing and cooking fish. Exported to the United States, Europe, and Asia, fishmeal is used as a protein-rich supplement in the booming industry of fish farming, or aquaculture. West Africa is among the world’s fastest-growing producers of fishmeal: more than fifty processing plants operate along the shores of Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea Bissau, and Gambia. The volume of fish they consume is enormous: one plant in Gambia alone takes in more than seven thousand five hundred tons of fish a year, mostly of a local type of shad known as bonga—a silvery fish about ten inches long." "After Golden Lead was fined, in 2019, it stopped releasing its toxic effluent directly into the lagoon. Instead, it ran a long wastewater pipe under a nearby public beach, dumping waste directly into the sea. Swimmers soon started complaining of rashes, the ocean grew thick with seaweed, and thousands of dead fish washed ashore, along with eels, rays, turtles, dolphins, and even whales." "About a quarter of all fish caught globally at sea end up as fish meal, produced by factories like those on the Gambian coast. Researchers have identified various potential alternatives—including human sewage, seaweed, cassava waste, soldier-fly larvae, and single-cell proteins produced by viruses and bacteria—but none is being produced affordably at scale. So, for now, fish meal it is." I have quoted heavily from the article to illustrate how just one location of foreign investment has resulted in grossly reduced living conditions for the original residents. How many other places worldwide are similarly affected can only be guessed. See: https://news.yahoo.com/how-the-glob...s-to-pollute-an-african-nation-144448931.html Frank