Fish starved from lack of oxygen saved by volunteers in Italy's Orchetto river

Volunteers were hard at work trying to save thousands of fish that were gasping from a lack of oxygen in the waters of the Orchetto River near Turin, Italy on Wednesday.

Tench, catfish and carp, which overwinter in the canals or pools of the Po tributaries such as Orchetto, were trapped in the shallow waters with a shortage of oxygen. The water temperatures in such tributaries are typically higher than in the Po.

The Regional Agency for Environmental Protection (ARPA), which carried out initial analyses of water samples in laboratories, reported that the absence of oxygen was caused by the high consumption by the fish trapped in this channel — and not by chemical pollutants.

According to ARPA, the scarcity of water caused by a summer drought has reduced the number and depth of natural pools in the river, reducing the number of winter refuges for the fish and making them overcrowded.

The Po, Italy's longest river which runs for more than 650 km from west to east across the north of the country, suffered the worst drought in 70 years during the past summer, after one of the driest winters in decades.