The story broke in Vietnam's national press on April 20: shoals of dead fish were washing up on the beaches all along a 200 kilometer stretch of the central Vietnamese coast, as far south as Hue. Coastal fishermen and local staff of Vietnam's Fisheries Agency blamed a discharge of chemicals in the vicinity of the Vung Ang Industrial Zone on about April 6. They told reporters that a toxic tide then worked its way south along the coast of four provinces, killing farmed fish as well as free swimming species.