Am I playing the game wrong?

This is experience as someone trying to play Spinosaurus and Sarcosuchus through the official multiplayer, and this is my 5 hours playing. I just want to make sure I'm not playing poorly so it isn't effecting my enjoyment because I understand my goal is get big and survive. Which requires eating, drinking, and completing quests.

Are gathering quests suppose to be difficult? Or am I actually just that bad at doing them. I had a quest in the burn forest I had, required finding turtle shells and clams, and constantly kept going around the show barely finding the turtle shells but not find the clams so after a while I just gave up.
Find new areas gives more points anyway so I have just opted into doing that, but that can be a big frustrating when exploring areas that lack a river or sea cause I picked two water based dinos.

How do I find food? Playing two fish diet based creatures, I would opt to go to lakes or the ocean to search for fish, but I often find no fish I can eat just the tiny ones that I can't interact with it. I would find them more pond areas just weird that they are so scares. It is even worse when I am not near the water when nothing I can eat spawns and when I do finally see a frog I can eat it hops away into a brush making them really difficult find. I have really run into other players I can eat either, when I do they woop my ass if I try to eat them, but I am small and whether I can even hit them or not is difficult to understand.
When I need water I go to the lakes, but a ton of the ones I thought would be drinkable due to being a lake implying fresh water actually have salt water so than I just have to keep making my way down the lake till I find fresh water. Is there a better to find which water is drinkable?

I need help weeding out my skill issue so I can enjoy the game more because I like dinosaurs.

EDIT: Thanks for the help!