| On Thursday 4.9.08 Eilat had some visitors from Egypt. Not just your everyday tourists, but two prominent scientists involved in marine biology, specifically mariculture. Dr. Amr Moneir Hilal and Dr. Mohammed Abdel Gelil el Absawy of the National Centre for Marine Science (NIOF) institute in Alexandria, Egypt, were in Eilat for a conference together with Dr. Muki Shpigel and Dr. George Kissil of IOLR's National Centre for Mariculture (NCM) in Eilat, along with Dr. Doug Lipton of the Stevens Institute of Technology in the USA. This was the second conference held by these three institutes, who are involved in a joint mariculture project that includes workshops, the exchange of students and technicians, as well as ongoing data exchange via email etc.
L-R: Doug Lipton, Muki Shpigel, Amr Moneir Hilal, George Kissil, Mohammed Abdel Gelil el Absawy
This project, one the few cooperative scientific projects between Israel and Egypt in existence, is funded by the American US-AID research fund MERC, which operates in areas of the Middle East. The present conference was to summarise the first year of progress in a three-year joint research project. MERC awarded this project approximately US$ 500,000 for research and development of ‘green' mariculture systems in arid areas that are friendly to the environment (‘sustainable'). Egypt and Israel each set up multi-trophic pilot systems, the former on the Mediterranean Sea and the latter on the Red Sea. The USA partner is in charge of economic modelling, necessary for the eventual commercialisation of the research findings.
The mariculture potential for intensive ponds in Israel is estimated at around 20,000 tonnes per year of sea bream, sea bass, and in the future also grouper and mullet. While growing marine fish in land-based facilities saves on the use precious freshwater resources, it does require treatment of the effluent water returning to the sea to cleanse it of fish excretion (‘nutrients'). The pollution believed to be caused by the nutrients from the fish cages that were in the sea until recently, it may be remembered, was what caused their forced removal. European countries impose huge fines on growers who pollute the sea.
The concept of ‘integrated' or ‘multi-trophic' systems is that one organism's effluent is another's feed, such that the system's components serve as biofilters to clean the water while also being a saleable product in themselves and/or saving on feed for other products in the system. The present research concentrates on fish, seaweed, and shellfish in a system of integrated ponds set up on the coasts of Israel and of Egypt, with the objective of discovering the most efficient solutions for ridding fishpond effluent of nutrients before its return to the sea.
Muki Shpigel (background: George Kissil, Arik Diamant)
The research at IOLR's NCM is being headed by Dr. Muki Shpigel, a world expert in integrated (multi-trophic) mariculture systems, and Dr. George Kissil, a renowned expert on fish nutrition. This research project is IOLR's fourth such project involving regional cooperation in the Middle East. Two additional projects are being done in cooperation with Jordan: One includes the Technion in Haifa in developing and establishing super-intensive marine fish growing systems and characterising the taste of the large fish in these systems. The other project deals in following the development of fish communities around artificial reefs in the northern tip of the Gulf of Eilat, in cooperation with the Ben Gurion University and the Marine Biology Laboratory in Aqaba. The fourth, a project planned in cooperation with Egypt due to begin soon, will engage in domestication and improvement of mullet both for meat and for caviar.
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The conference, held at the Ben Gurion University Eilat Campus, opened with a brief presentation of IOLR for the visiting Egyptian scientists by NCM's director, Dr. Arik Diamant. This was followed by Dr. Kissil giving a short presentation in memory of the late Dr. Bob Abel of the USA, who died before his dream of a regional cooperation project got completely underway. Dr. Shpigel then presented both as project Coordinator and as NCM's representative, discussing what was accomplished over the year. The Egyptian scientists presented the progress at their facility, which actually has two teams and two systems, and Dr. Lipton explained how the economic models being used operate and what data he needs from the scientists at both facilities to do his work as accurately as possible. Each facility's presentation also included an economic report as well as the scheduled work tasks accomplished.
The first year of the project was mainly allocated for construction of the pilot facilities in Israel and Egypt. Both NCM and NIOF had unexpected setbacks during this year. NCM had a fire in November 2007 which cased over $3 million worth of damage, destroying not only offices, labs, and equipment but also stock and experiments. It is still far from being rebuilt, although considerable progress has been made. There were even 3000 white grouper fingerlings produced this summer, so many that they were handed out to other institutes in Israel who needed some! NIOF in Egypt had hired contractors to build on the land they were given for the project outside Alexandria, but the contractors up and disappeared in mid-work, leaving the institute stranded so they ended up completing the construction themselves in order to still keep more or less on schedule. Devaluation of the dollar by around 30% also impacted the project significantly, resulting in both facilities having to go way over budget because the dollars granted had become worth far less Israeli shekels or Egyptian pounds, respectively, than when allocated. Nonetheless, both facilities pulled up their bootstraps and carried on.
Stocking of the finished facilities is expected to be in October or November. This will include sea bream and/or mullets, clams, and algae. At this point the ‘real research' can begin, with the organisms being studied for all the parameters involved on both the individual level (growth rate, mortality, food conversion ratio, etc.) and integrated level (nitrogen budgets and so on). Successful multi-trophic systems mean that land-based mariculture can both produce more income by having more than one saleable product while also saving on both feed and effluent water treatment costs, and they can be environmentally sustainable because the water returned to the sea is adequately clean.
The sea is a shared resource. The creatures in the sea are part of an eco-system, so overfishing not only depletes the fished organism, but creates upsets and deficits to the whole system, with a ripple effect that eventually goes well beyond the specific fishing site(s) in question. The same applies to anything harmful going into the sea, e.g. pollution. Seawater and marine organisms do not recognise political boundaries. Dr. Shpigel mentioned that removal of the fish cages, assuming they even did pollute as claimed, was a futile gesture because the companies simply moved elsewhere to keep doing the same thing in other waters. Meaning, the same assumed pollution is still happening, just in another sea, and Eilat or Israel is deprived of that industry's benefits. The other half of Dr. Shpigel's remark was that even if Eilat does not have cages in the Red Sea, there's nothing to prevent Aqaba or Egypt or Saudi Arabia from putting in cages and creating the same problem that would still affect our own waters. Hence, all the regional entities are in the same boat and cooperation between them, both for their own interests and greater ecological ones, is vital. This project is an encouraging and concrete move in the right direction.
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