ENVIRONMENT-EGYPT: Fishing in Troubled Desert Waters

By Cam McGrath Reprint | | Print |

Cam McGrath

DAKHLA OASIS (EGYPT), Mar 8 2002 (IPS) - With hundreds of kilometers of baking desert all round, Dakhla seems hardly the place to go fishing, even if it is an oasis. But local officials insist that a fishing enterprise here is turning productive.

In the villages around, many find that claim fishy.

A fishery project was launched in this oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert ten years ago. Three reservoirs of about 400 acres each were built to collect irrigation run-off from surrounding fields. Bolti fish, a species of Tilapia native to the Nile were imported into the reservoirs.

They did not last long. Many of the fish died from pollution, heat, or lack of oxygen. One reservoir was closed to fishing when water samples showed dangerously high levels of fertilisers and pesticides. In July last year, officials declared the lake unsafe for fishing or swimming.

But administrators remained determined that the fishing industry can succeeded in the desert. The pollution problem was solved and the water quality has improved dramatically in recent months, says Moustafa Soliman, 66, head of the district’s Fishing Cooperative.

“The results are good,” he said. “About eight to ten tonnes of fish are harvested each month in the oasis,” he told IPS.

“We sent water samples to the lab and they found that they were okay,” Soliman said. “At our last meeting we gave instructions to fishermen and agreed to allow them to resume fishing in the lake.”

The cooperative has licensed 45 fishermen, most of them from traditional fishing communities outside the oasis, to harvest the fish. A small fleet of white rowboats with green nylon nets comb the shallow reservoirs near the villages of Mut Talata, Qalamoun and Gharb el-Maghoub.

“There is no production quota,” says Soliman. “The cooperative buys all the fish from the fishermen and is responsible for selling them. Much of the catch is sold locally, with any excess going to Cairo.”

Not everyone believes this story of happy abundance. “It’s too hot for the fish in the summer when the temperature reaches 45 Celsius in the shade and 50 in the sun,” says Omar Ahmed, head of Dakhla Tourist Office. “In addition, poisons from agricultural activities have caused many fish to die.”

The expansive oasis is blessed with an abundance of underground water that permits the cultivation of dates, fruits and clover, but blistering summer temperatures make the shallow reservoirs too hot for most fish to survive. Local residents say that all three reservoirs, which have no outlets, are becoming increasingly toxic as they accumulate agricultural waste.

At Asmak we Teor el-Wadi (Oasis Fish and Foul), the only fish restaurant in Dakhla Oasis, the grill sizzles with mackerel – but it’s fish that’s come in from distant seaports.

Farmer Mohammed Ali recalls seeing homegrown Bolti on the grill two years earlier. Now people are afraid to eat it. Most of the fish harvested from Dakhla’s three reservoirs are now sold to unsuspecting buyers outside the oasis, Ali says.

“The fish here are contaminated,” he insists. “We send all our fish to other areas because people there don’t know any better.”

But despite these disasters, fishing is catching on in this oasis. In the tiny village of Budkhulu, mayor Kamel Hussein Mohammed has built small reservoirs and stocked them with thousands of fish brought from outside the oasis. He hopes not to repeat the mistakes of the Fishing Cooperative.

The mayor’s four reservoirs are only about an acre each and two metres deep with “clean water you can drink,” he says. The reservoirs are fed directly from an artesian well. This protects them from pollution and keeps the water cool all year. The overflow cultivates his fields. This solves the problem of water stagnation that plagued the cooperative’s three reservoirs and killed thousands of fish.

The fish are fed wheat pellets and corn and moved from pond to pond according to their size. The mayor’s experiment is just six months old, but the early results are impressive. Bolti up to a kilo are served at dinner tables in the village. The mayor hopes to sell the fish right across the oasis soon.

One problem he has not been able to solve lurks in the reeds at the far end of each pond. “The ducks come and eat my fish,” he says. “But I don’t mind, because we eat the ducks.”