Ugly creature lures Egyptian divers
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Khaleej Times 19 January 2004
Of all the gorgeously bright fish and plants in the Red Sea, the most unlikely looking creature of all is luring amateur divers to risk their lives.
The fat slug-like sea cucumber is making big waves because of its high demand throughout Asia where it is prized as an aphrodisiac or healing agent.
With the sea cucumber valued so much and with unemployed Egyptians desperate for money, officials fear more diving accidents and destruction of coral reefs through the possible extinction of this toxin filtering creature.
“It is a recipe for disaster in every way,” said Karim Helal, who heads the Red Sea Association for Diving and Watersports in Hurghada, a magnet for divers from Egypt and throughout the world.
Helal was describing how inexperienced divers, preyed upon by captains of fishing boats, have been given money and shoddy equipment, and sent to dive as deep as 40-50 meters (130-160 feet) three or four times a day in dangerous succession.
Many are unemployed college graduates who have never learned they need to rest on the surface between dives to dissolve nitrogen that accumulates underwater in the bloodstream, Helal said.
Helal recalled several stranded divers he rescued by accident while he was on a call to recover a body.
“They were in the middle of nowhere” and had suffered dehydration and decompression sickness (DCS) known as the bends, he said.
Divers end up in recompression chambers when accidents actually get reported, Helal said, explaining that many cases of DCS and other life-threatening incidents go unreported.
Of nine diving accident cases treated this year in the three recompression chambers along the Red Sea coast, seven resulted from sea cucumber fishing, said Doctor Hanaa Nessim who mans the diving emergency center in the coastal diving town of Safaga.
Even though the Egyptian government imposed a ban earlier this year on fishing the creature, sea cucumber can still be exported legally, which makes it difficult to stop the poaching, according to environmentalist Mohammed Habib.
Egypt is one of several countries plagued by sea cucumber overfishing in recent years along with Equador’s Galapagos Islands, India and the Philippines which has enacted an absolute ban on their capture.
But demand continues throughout Asia where the expensive delicacy with its alleged aphrodisiac and healing properties.
In China, the processed carcasses called hai-som are believed to have curative powers. The Japanese eat them raw, nibble on their pickled intestines over drinks and eat their dried gonads as a special treat. Malaysians bottle sea cucumbers in a pure form to cure internal ailments such as ulcers, and rub a mixture of the extract on toothaches and cuts.
The sea cucumber risks being poached to extinction in Egypt, which would threaten the life of the Red Sea by annihilating a basic building block of its ecosystem, experts say.
“Coral reefs in Egypt’s Red Sea can be likened to a desert oasis” where living reefs provide nutrients for the sea, Habib said.
“Without the reef as a source of nutrients the entire ecosystem of the sea would collapse,” deterring certified divers and snorkelers, and hurting the vital tourism industry, he said.
The sea cucumbers do the job of an earthworm in soil, recycling waste and aerating the sea floor, but it looks more like a fat slug or a squat, overstuffed sausage.
Trailing sand-coluored beads of nutrient-rich excrement behind as it creeps millimeters per minute along the sea floor, this ugly relative of the starfish filters toxins out of the water.
Whether disgusting or delicious, sea cucumbers are essential for keeping the water clean and the snorkelers coming back, according to an environmental group which seeks to maintain the Red Sea’s top rank among dive sites worldwide.
Amr Ali, a member of the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conversation Association who owns a small fleet of dive boats, said he worries that cloudy water will push sport divers toward other reefs with wider fish variety.
But Ali said he is confident that further education about their environmental role, combined with tougher laws on exporting the ugliest mug of the Red Sea will help safeguard the water’s overall beauty.
Those caught currently face fines and the confiscation of their equipment, but it is not enough, he said.
“Stop sea cucumber exporting from Egypt,” he said. “Why would people fish if they cannot sell what they’re fishing?” |
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