Hi! I'm trying to locate a short story which I have read, but it doesn't match up with anything I can find I've had a very hard time trying to locate it. I know it to be real, I had the story in an old sci-fi magazine. It was published in the 1950's-1960's in Galaxy Science Fiction or IF magazine.

It featured a lone male operator on an water world refining/collecting uranium with nets, with native egg laying aquatic humanoids and something? about a mountain like feature rising/moving.

It takes place on a floating platform on a water-world where nets are used to collect radioactive materials(I believe uranium) from the sea-water. The protagonist is a solitary man, though there might have briefly been an woman who was a love interest.

The planet is inhabited by natives, humanoid & bipedal but with webbed feet who lay eggs. There's also an environmental factor, and a moving solid natural feature? Either a mountain of a sort or some moving iceberg. There's some sort of disaster scenario that the natives try to avert that the humans interpret as sabotage, caused by the harvesting of said radioactive particles via nets.

Most of the options that come up are similar in abstract, but very much not the story overall. I cannot seem to locate it.

I know it's real, I found it and my mom bought it for me in a used book shop and I read that story several times. Unfortunately that copy has dissolved due to my child self not taking good care of it, and I can't seem to find it, nor did I record what the authors name or the stories title. It is...frustrating to say the least.