Oder mass fish deaths: Searching for clues to Polish-German border mystery

The men in waders looked solemn as they heaved buckets of dead fish from a boat and lay the corpses on a tarpaulin stretched out on the riverbank.

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They had been doing this for eight days near the city of Szczecin, faces masked against the nauseating stench. "I just feel numb now," said one worker, sadly.

Something is killing fish - in their thousands - on the River Oder.

The river forms a border between Poland and Germany. Despite weeks of investigation, experts from both countries have been unable to establish exactly what is to blame. Hundreds of tonnes of dead fish have already been removed.

Scientists suspect someone polluted the water with a substance that appears to have caused high salt levels. That encouraged golden algae to flourish. The toxins it emitted killed the fish. The rotting corpses then further reduced the water quality.

A deadly, chemical chain reaction which, they say, may have been exacerbated by a hot summer and low river levels. But they have yet to identify the original pollutant.

"It will be difficult to get a clear answer to what caused it," says Andrzej Kapusta, of the Inland Fisheries Institute. We joined him and his team on board a small boat as they tested the water in the Oder.

"The scale of this ecological disaster is unprecedented in Poland. It's a catastrophe. We have never found so many dead creatures, so many dead fish, clams or snails. It's the first time it's happened, and it is a serious warning."