Every year, Tonle Sap Lake fills up and then empties partly into the Mekong River. Its size and the pulsations of its natural reverse current charging system have earned it the nickname “heart of Cambodia”.
At the end of 2021, in the season when the Tonlé Sap is supposed to be at its highest, Singaporean photographer Calvin Chow sailed sixteen days on the approximately 14,000 square kilometers of water in the lake. He met the inhabitants of the floating villages that border it. And documented its gradual decline: “I didn’t go to see it when it reached its lowest water level, but when this phenomenon became recurrent.”
Well-hidden houseboats
In 2019, the drought caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon had dealt a blow to the fishing communities who live and depend on the lake. Since then, the water level of what was once one of the world’s most productive fisheries has continued to