This is the government’s best answer to the worst human-caused change the Murray basin has ever seen.

Lake Albert, near the mouth of the once-Mighty Murray, is drying. Soon parts of the lake will be a wind-blown paddock.

It will be an enormous paddock, because Lake Albert is still so large that it’s not always possible to seethe far shore.

And it is alive with fish.

“The lake is already 20cm below sea level,” says fisherman Garry Hera-Singh. “By the end of summer it will be a metre below. What water’s left will get warmer, saltier and de-oxygenated. Fish will die – thousands and thousands of tonnes, rotting and stinking.”

The government’s answer is to kill the fish before the fish die. The environment department is now paying fishermen to hunt carp and other species, usually with nets, and turn the catch into lobster bait.

“Due to increasing salinity levels, all indications are that a fish kill is inevitable later this year and this poses a risk to the amenity value of Lake Albert and the surrounding communities,” Fisheries Minister Paul Caica said with measured understatement.

“We are therefore seeking the assistance of all fishers in the Lakes and Coorong fishery to maximise their fishing effort in a bid to land as many fish as possible on a daily basis.

“A fish down like this is unprecedented in South Australia. It has never been attempted before and so we want to see just how effective an operation like this will be.”

So, every morning, the 18 fishers climb into their boats. They travel more than 10 kilometres across Lake Albert from Meningie but their life jackets are useless. If their boat sank or capsized they could stand almost anywhere, and still keep their armpits dry. Most of these fishers set their nets in water not even two metres deep. Were it not for the mud, they could drive most of the way in a properly set-up LandCruiser.

State River Murray Minister Karlene Maywald says that a drought has resulted in a steady decline in the lake’s water levels and quality.

“Salinity in the lake is increasing due mainly to natural evaporation and is predicted to increase further with the onset of warmer weather,” she said.

But she’s wrong. It’s not “natural evaporation” which is to blame. Un-natural irrigation and over-exploitation has reduced inflows to a thimble-full

The Murray starts halfway across the Australian continent, on the western side of the Great Dividing Range 4000 kilometres away. It rushes down mountains, slides past pastures and then slugs past rice fields, before stopping short of the sea completely exhausted.

So much water is taken out for irrigation, that it’s now a large earthen irrigation ditch.

“There’s $20,” says Mr Hera-Singh as he takes a five kilo carp from the net and it flaps and bangs its black and silver body on the dinghy’s floor.

Every metre of net holds another fish. He has half a kilometre of nets set. In one hour he has 400 kilos of carp. These normally sell for 40 cents a kilo – so cheap that most fishers distain from targetting the species. Now they’re getting $4 a kilo, courtesy of the government. It’s paying fishers ten times market value as inducement to catch as many as they can.

In one day, Garry Hera-Singh has earnt himself $3000. The government has set aside half a million dollars or more in carp bounties. Early this week, 61 tonnes of carp had been delivered to Meningie’s freezer works. Mr Hera-Singh estimates that by next Monday, 100 tonnes will have landed.

“But most of us reckon there’s 10,000 tonnes of carp here, so we’re only taking 10 per cent of the biomass,” he said. “The rest will die and rot.”

Meanwhile, new analysis shows that south-ease Australia’s water scarcity started up to 15 years ago.

The finding follows the first ever national and comprehensive analysis of 30 years of on-ground and satellite observations of Australia’s water resources.

“The data shows the first signs of diminishing water availability in Australia appeared somewhere between 1993 and 1996 when the rate of water resource capture and use started to exceed the rate of streamflow supply,” said CSIRO researcher Dr Albert van Dijk.

“What makes the situation appear so much worse is that the 60s and 70s were quite wet. That’s also when we started capturing river flows in large reservoirs for our growing cities and irrigated agriculture. In retrospect it appears we have become over-reliant on what is now looking like ‘bonus’ rainfall during that time,” he said.

The Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, has deferred until after the state election a decision to dam the Murray near Wellington.

The dam would hold back water between Wellington and Blanchetown, and offers the promise of better water to lower river towns – including Adelaide – which rely on the Murray for water.

State Environment Minister Jay Weatherill is opposed to the dam, although the government has already spent millions on an access road to the site.

But not all experts agree that the Wellington dam would be all bad. A “Lakes Need Water” group has been set up, which supports flooding Lakes Albert and Alexandrina with sea water, rather then let them dry out.

“The facts are very unpleasant but very clear,” says spokesperson Trevor Harden. “There is insufficient freshwater in the Murray-Darling Basin to support sufficient environmental flows to the Lower Lakes.”

The group believes that the lack of water in the Lower Lakes should be decoupled from the rest of the problems of the Murray-Darling Basin by virtue of the Lower Lakes' proximity to the sea.

“By opening the barrages to let in seawater, the Lower Lakes can be reconstructed and returned to a natural tidal estuary. This will conserve fresh water and maximise environmental flows for damaged wetlands up river that do not have the option of the sea,” Mr Harden said.

“In May this year the acid sulphate soils in many locations have already dried out. Pools of sulphuric acid are forming with the winter rains and the current bio-remediation efforts are unproven. There is no more time to wait and debate.

“We therefore advocate construction of a weir near Wellington to conserve freshwater in the River Murray and protect SA's water supply from contamination.”

So the government’s proposal is to save the lakes and killing the fish. Another proposal is to save the lakes and drown them in salt water.

There are incongruities in environmental politics the world over, but few so intriguing as the last lapping of the last water from what once were Australia’s mightiest lakes.