23 - 29 August 2001
Issue No.548
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 23 - 29 August 2001 Issue No.548 |
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Killing time on the reef
Visitors to the Red Sea need to be more aware of the fragility of the marine environment before they take the plunge, as Jenny Jobbins finds out
It's never been easier to make a last-minute trip to Sharm El-Sheikh. There's an abundance of hotel space, several daily flights and buses from Cairo, and -- whether you're a diver or a beach bum, and taking the kids or granny -- lots of amusements when you get there. You can even get a one-way flight and buy a return ticket when you get bored.
Divers can enjoy the reef without damaging delicate corals (right) or upsetting the marine ecosystem. Below: Corals building a home on a discarded piece of pipe photos Farid Atiya
It's fun to go away virtually unprepared, and if you forget something, there's little you can't replace in Sharm El-Sheikh nowadays. Forgetting to do your homework, though, can lead to problems -- for the environment, not for you. Most people don't visit the Red Sea armed with malice aforethought, but carelessness can have a similar effect.
The in-flight entertainment on the EgyptAir flight from Cairo is a sensitive and well-made documentary giving information about the coral reef and telling tourists how and how not to behave around it. "Don't tread on the corals!" the film admonishes, to a shot of web-footed divers losing their balance and stomping on the reef. "Don't feed the fish!" it goes on, as divers scatter tidbits to a fleet of damsel fish. All well and good, and excellent preparation for reef behaviour. The film was in English. The trouble with the flight I took a couple of weekends ago, though, was that, although the Boeing 747 was filled to the brim with tourists, apart from me and half a dozen Japanese they were all Egyptian. They sat mesmerised at the pretty footage on the screen, and watched the divers walking on the corals and feeding the fish, and must have been quite content to see that what is what one does underwater. Even had every passenger on the flight understood English, it wouldn't have much mattered because shortly into the film the sound failed. There were no sub-titles.
I landed at Ras Nasrani on one of those sultry mornings when you know this is as good as the air is going to get. The teenagers were waiting for my plane to land so we could set off for the beach. One of them had a school holiday project: counting the number of broken corals in a given square on three dive sites -- one used, one semi- used, and one hardly disturbed at all.
I can't count how many people in Sinai contributed to this project, but I hope the school will appreciate it and be grateful. They ranged from the carpenter who made the frame to the dive centres who lent equipment and the park officials who pointed the teenager to an undisturbed reef, plus her dive buddies, tank carriers, drivers, her friends, her parents, their friends, and the rest of the team teenagers seem to recruit nowadays whenever they need anything. I went as honorary snorkeller and sun cream SPF tester, one of my favourite roles. It promised to be a good day. As soon as we entered the water, though, we could see that life hadn't been so good to the corals.
Sharm El-Sheikh used to straddle the cliffs between Ras Muhammed and Naama Bay, lazy and sun-soaked, while the coral got on quietly with its reef building business below the surface and the desert stretched undisturbed except by the occasional Bedouin and his camel. In the last 15 years, however, there has been extraordinary development, unequalled in almost any resort anywhere. Hotel complexes rub shoulders right along the shoreline, and in Naama Bay -- once a separate location but now the centre of the sprawling resort people call "Sharm" -- this line now runs three deep. There is every brand of hotel on offer, even a Ritz (the first in Africa).
The charter flights fly in from Europe, carrying divers (most of whom can be expected to have done some homework and know they aren't supposed to trample the corals). Flights from Cairo carry, largely, couples and families who need a beach break. Each week a breathtaking average of 60,000 visitors fly in, and a similar number fly out (a handful are known to stay, like Shirley Valentine, and get jobs in bars or dive centres). Most of the visitors behave themselves on the reef, but the dive sites are so full that sometimes divers complain that all they can see around and below them are other divers.
Fifteen years ago the dive sites strung round the coast had picturesque names (they still do), colourful corals and a rich abundance of fish and other marine life. I wish I could say they still had these, too. Some of these dive sties, once beautiful coral gardens, are now barren reef graveyards with a few tired fish. Some have been crushed altogether during careless hotel construction.
Signs abound -- you can barely spend a day on the Red Sea coasts without knowing the rules by heart. No fishing or spear fishing; don't tread on the corals; don't feed the fish; access the water from designated points only; do not litter, do not collect, remove, or damage any material, living or dead; take nothing with you ... leave nothing behind. Dive centres and the Ras Muhammed National Park officials maintain the sites with deeply commendable care. Sites in the park are closed in rotation to de- stress the fish. Dive masters shepherd their protégés, making sure their fins steer clear of the corals and that they don't break or steal anything. Dive boats no longer anchor to the reef, but to special moorings.
The fragile reef, though, is no match for the numbers. Boats hold up to 20 divers, and while dive masters split their charges into small, manageable groups according to experience, no dive master can keep complete control of 20 keen divers. Multiply this over and over, because there might be two dozen boats out on the reefs at any one time. Besides, not all divers go into the water accompanied by a an expert who knows the area, since once you have passed a dive course you can fill your tanks -- on production of a valid card -- and go off on your own (apart from your buddy, of course). Equipment use depends on mutual trust and respect between dive centres and divers, but if divers go where they shouldn't or hurtle through the water with the lack of consideration they show when driving through Cairo traffic, then corals are bound to get hit. The reefs are, if anything, just as threatened by the beach-loungers, who go into the water for a cool-off paddle and, untrained in marine etiquette, pick up shells, discard plastic bags and bottles and show disregard by gadding about in noisy little boats.
The teenager and her crew set up their equipment at the three chosen sites. She seemed to know how her measurements worked, though none of the rest of us did; we just followed instructions. Fortunately, there was little for me to do but skim here and there just under the surface, looking for pretty fish among the strands of dead coral which lay strewn like dried pasta on the reef bed and wondering why all the surviving corals seemed to be blue (a phenomenon I have observed in dead reefs in other parts of the world). Every once in a while I would swim over the divers and bathe in their bubbles, forgetting in those magic moments that this was carbon dioxide and instead sinking down, down, down like Alice, only you aren't going down, it's the bubbles, of course, which are floating up. And the water, with its mushroomy white bubbles, is such a deep, deep blue.
It was only at the last, undisturbed site, tucked safely inside the park itself, that we saw the reef as it used to be -- unspoiled, with dozens of parrot fish, red anthias, clouds of silver fishlings, lovely corals and anemones, solitary lion fish and sandy sea worms. Thank heaven for Ras Muhammed and the park, but please, please let's extend our care so all the beaches and all the reefs are safe, and the next generation of teenagers can take a living reef for granted.
Practical Information:
EgyptAir has several daily flight to Sharm El- Sheikh: 390 6078/390 0999/393 7649
East Delta bus company: 484 2753
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