Four kilometres of nets. Twenty drift nets, the kind that are most strictly banned. And 872 Ohrid belvica, weighing 116.9 kilograms in total, pulled out of the water dead.

That is the tally from one single patrol operation on Lake Ohrid, carried out on 1 September along the stretch between the Struga villages of Kalishta and Radozhda. Officers from the Lake Ohrid Border Police Station, together with the Regional Centre for Border Affairs West, acting on instructions from a public prosecutor, lifted the nets along with the catch. The competent fisheries inspectorate has been notified.

The numbers sound like a success. And they are - but only if you don't stop to ask how long those nets had been sitting there. You do not lay four kilometres of net in one evening, and you do not pull it up in five minutes. This is infrastructure, not improvisation.

Belvica is endemic, not supermarket fish

The Ohrid belvica is no ordinary fish. It is part of what makes Lake Ohrid one of the oldest and most singular lakes in Europe. Every kilogram dragged out with a banned net comes from a stock that cannot be replenished by import.

The Interior Ministry says the checks will continue in the period ahead, with stepped-up operations aimed at identifying those fishing illegally and protecting fish stocks. The announcement is welcome. But the statement is missing exactly what people most want to know - whether anyone who set those nets has been identified or detained, and whether criminal charges have been filed.

The nets were caught, the people weren't

That is the difference between an operation and a system. Pulling up a net removes a consequence. Catching the person who laid it changes the calculation for everyone else thinking of doing the same.

If the investigation stops at "the inspectorate has been notified," in a few weeks there will be another four kilometres of net in the same waters. Because so far the cost to whoever set them amounts to one thing - a lost net.

The lake is not asking for heroics. It is asking for someone to answer.