The Tonlé Sap, located in Cambodia, is Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake and a UNESCO-recognized biosphere reserve. Its water level fluctuates dramatically with the seasons: it expands during the rainy season, sustaining extraordinary biodiversity, then contracts in the dry season, providing vital resources to millions of people.

With its current reversing once a year, the lake is a hydrological curiosity rarely seen elsewhere—a vast fishing basin, one of the largest in the world. It is also a place of life, as an entire population lives on the Tonlé Sap, often under precarious