Several mass fish deaths spotted in Middle East

It has been estimated that around 820 million people depend on fisheries and aquaculture as livelihoods worldwide. However, several countries in the Middle East have increasingly seen several mass fish deaths over the past few years.

Water pollution, high levels of water salinity, the use of pesticides and chemicals, and high temperatures of sea or river water are several reasons for the mass death of fisheries in the region, especially over the past few months.

Last week, large swarms of fish washed ashore and started decaying in the Oued Nfifikh valley, east of Mohammedia city in Morocco, as shown in a video circulated on social media. As reported by local media, the valley became a polluted place, sounding the alarm of environmental disaster.

Environmentalists and activists aroused doubts about a waste dump as the source of pollution that caused the death of marine fauna, calling for an urgent analysis of the “contaminated” water.

However, Abd al-Rahim Sahrawi, head of the Association of Teachers of Life and Earth Sciences in Mohammedia, told SNRTnews on Thursday that the closure of the entrance of Oued Nfifikh and the proliferation of sand prevented sea water from reaching the valley and consequently led to a high level of salinity in the valley’s water. He continued that high sea salinity and lack of water turned the valley into a spot of stagnant water that suffers from a lack of oxygen, indicating that this is the main reason for the death of the fish.

This was not the first time that a large number of fish were found dead in Morocco. Swarms of fish were found dead on the beach of Dayet er-Roumi Lake due to a decrease in the water’s oxygen level, Moroccan channel 2M reported on June 2.  

A similar incident occurred two months ago in Iraq. The Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources accused saboteurs of throwing “poisons” into a water estuary between Wasit and Diwaniyah governorates, causing the death of a large amount of fish.

In Iraq’s southern Basra Governorate, other swarms of fish died due to the high pollution rate in the Shatt al-Arab River. The mass deaths of tilapia fish were caused due to “the poor quality of the water in this river because of the throwing of heavy, sewage waterwaste […] which led to a decrease in the percentage of oxygen in the water,” Hadi Hussein Qassem, director of Basra’s Agriculture Department, told the Iraqi News Agency (INA) on June 14.

The marine fauna in the river is also vulnerable to more incidents of death due to the high level of the salinity of water due to the current climate change impacts. “The high level of salinity in the waters of the Shatt al-Arab is a very big problem, and its impact is negative and direct on the citizens of Basra in terms of pollution, diseases, fish deaths and others,” Jum'a Shiaa, director of Water Resources in Basra, told INA on August 1.

Shiaa added that the authorities took urgent measures by releasing more water into the river to decrease the salinity, with the water release reaching 94 cubic meters per second. Employees at the Basra Water Directorate were directed not to “use the Shatt al-Arab water at all during this period,” he said.

In 2018, a total of 15 tons of caged farmed carp died in Iraq’s Babylon Governorate due to Koi herpesvirus (KHV), a disease that infects the fish’s gills and turns them into dying tissues. The causes of the disease were attributed to high levels of pollution.

One year later, following an inquiry conducted by the UN Environment, WHO and FAO, it was confirmed that the reason for the fish deaths in the govornorate was the infection of the fish with KHV due to the high temperature and the shortage of oxygen in the water, the UN Environment Program said in a report on March 6, 2019.

In Jordon, KHV has also infected fish, causing the death of thousands of carp, with losses estimated at 300,000 Jordanian dinars, Al Mamlaka TV reported on May 18.

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, large numbers of maid fish were found dead along the shores of Saihat Lake, Saudi newspaper Al Youm reported on June 15. The reason was attributed to the increasing sea temperature and the lack of oxygen.

Lebanon was not far away from this phenomenon. In April, fishermen of the Mediterranean city of Sidon suffered losses of about 200,000 kilograms of fish due to pesticides and chemicals drained from nearby factories into the sea, Sky News Arabia reported. The same incident occurred in Lake Qaraoun, where tons of fish washed ashore from the artificial lake in Beqaa Valley in the south of the country, Euronews reported in April.

In Egypt, tons of mullet fish died of suffocation in 2019 as a result of exposure to water saturated with silt that carried a fatal virus and bacteria after opening the Edfina Barrage in Rashid city in Egypt’s Delta, Al-Mal News reported in September 2019.

Climatic changes are the main factor for the cause of fish deaths, especially during the summer season, when the rate of rainfall and fish farming is on a decline, and thus the percentage of oxygen decreases, the head of the Egyptian Authority for Fisheries, Khaled Al-Hassani, told Jusoor Post.

He added that fish farmers must use floating fish food instead of submersible food that can easily decompose at the bottom of a river or sea course and thus reduce the oxygen in the water.

Hassani added that with the current high temperatures and humidity and the exposure of fish to sunlight, their skin is peeled off, adding that in order to save the fish, the water levels must be increased.