As waters warm, lionfish invasion strains Lebanon’s seas

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Lionfish, a predatory venomous fish native to the nearby Red Sea and the Indo-Pacific, is pictured after a catch in Sarafand, Lebanon June 20, 2019. Picture taken June 20, 2019. (Reuters)
Updated 16 July 2019
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As waters warm, lionfish invasion strains Lebanon’s seas

  • Lionfish have made a new home for themselves in the Mediterranean

SARAFAND: Lebanese fisherman Hassan Younes has been diving the same waters off his coastal hometown for three decades but has never seen anything like this year as native species disappear and invasive lionfish take their place.
Gone are the days when he used to boast an abundant catch of red lobster, sea urchin and red mullet. Now he counts himself lucky if he catches a sea bass.
What is abundant, however, are lionfish: a predatory venomous fish native to the Red Sea, and Indo-Pacific region that eat smaller fish, crustaceans and even each other.
Environmentalists and marine biologists say because of the 2015 expansion and deepening of the Suez Canal, which connects the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and warming waters resulting from global climate change, lionfish have made a new home for themselves in the Mediterranean.
The rapid expansion of the lionfish is also being felt more widely, threatening coral reefs and fish stocks.
The United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said their populations have swelled dramatically in the past 15 years, partly as a result of people releasing unwanted fish from home aquariums, and they are harming native coral reefs in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.
“This sea is not the sea we grew up with,” Younes said on a recent morning out on his boat.
“Many times, we go out to sea and come back emptyhanded. We don’t even make enough to cover the price of diesel,” he said.
The fish, with venomous wing-like fins and spines, was first sighted in the Mediterranean in 1991, then not again until 2012 off the coast of southern Lebanon. Since 2015 it has steadily spread across the region, said marine biologist Jason Hall-Spencer.
“Like genocide”
Fisherman Atallah Siblini, who specializes in spearhunting, said he started seeing the fish three years ago but it was rare.
“Now it is like 30 to 50 of them in one place. They started to scare away the other fish including sea bass which we depend on and they eat everything.”
“It is like genocide.”
Environmentalists in Lebanon say the livelihoods of the fishermen and the survival of the marine ecosystem maybe depend on people eating lionfish.
The spread of the fish has been especially hard on Lebanon’s marine ecosystem already weakened by decades of overfishing, pollution and urbanization
“It eats a lot and breeds all year long so it is very easy for it to disturb the ecological balance,” said Jina Talj, an environmentalist.
“But luckily for us, it is also one of the tastiest types of fish,” added Talj, who runs a campaign to encourage people to eat lionfish, which tastes like sea bass. So far, it is mainly the fishermen who have heeded the call but Talj hopes her campaign can help.
Her NGO, Diaries of the Ocean, has government recognition but receives no funding and relies on volunteers.
“The biggest problem we face is lack of knowledge among the public about the sea. So how can we save it if we don’t know what we have?” she said.
The invasive fish spawn every four days and can lay up to two million eggs every year capable of surviving ocean drifts.
Hall-Spencer says the spread this year has been in “plague-like proportions” across the Eastern Mediterranean including Greece, Turkey, Israel and Cyprus which has just launched a cull.
To curb the problem in the long term, he would like to see the construction of a salt water lock in the Suez Canal — an area of very salty water which would stop species moving from one sea to the other.
But until then, the best thing to do is to catch the lionfish “and also celebrate the fact that they are good to eat,” he said.


Sudan battle forces 10,000 families out of famine-hit camp: UN

Updated 58 min ago
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Sudan battle forces 10,000 families out of famine-hit camp: UN

  • The International Organization for Migration said the violence since February 11 had displaced 10,000 families from Zamzam
  • Beyond the camp, a further “1,544 households were displaced from various villages” near El-Fasher, the IOM said

PORT SUDAN: Two days of fighting between Sudanese rivals have forced an estimated 10,000 families to flee a famine-hit displacement camp in the Darfur region, the UN migration agency said Wednesday.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) last week stormed Zamzam camp, home to at least half a million people, triggering clashes with the Sudanese army and allied militias, witnesses told AFP.
The International Organization for Migration said the violence since February 11 had displaced 10,000 families from Zamzam, just south of North Darfur state capital El-Fasher.
The agency cautioned that its data covers only the first two days of the reported attack as its collection capacity had been reduced due to funding constraints.
Beyond the camp, a further “1,544 households were displaced from various villages” near El-Fasher, the IOM said.
El-Fasher is the only state capital in the vast western region of Darfur that the RSF has not captured in its nearly two-year war with the Sudanese army.
With the military on the verge of retaking the capital Khartoum following a multi-front offensive on central Sudan, the paramilitaries have intensified attacks on El-Fasher in a bid to consolidate their hold on Darfur.
But the RSF has not managed to take the city, its attacks successively repelled by the army-aligned Joint Forces but sending tens of thousands of people fleeing.
Before the most recent attacks, there were already 1.7 million people displaced in North Darfur alone, with two million facing extreme food insecurity, according to the UN.
Established in 2004, Zamzam has received waves of displaced Sudanese during the current war, which began in April 2023.
Some aid officials told AFP the camp’s population has swelled to around one million during the war.
Famine was first declared in Zamzam in August, and has since taken hold of two other displacement camps around El-Fasher.
According to a UN-backed assessment, famine is projected to spread to five more areas of the state including the capital El-Fasher by May.
Across Sudan, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted over 12 million and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.


Polio still circulating in Gaza, mass vaccination to resume: WHO

Updated 19 February 2025
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Polio still circulating in Gaza, mass vaccination to resume: WHO

  • The UN health agency said no more polio cases had been reported since a 10-month-old child was paralyzed in Gaza last August
  • “The presence of the virus still poses a risk to children with low or no immunity, in Gaza and throughout the region“

GENEVA: The World Health Organization said Wednesday that mass polio vaccination would resume in Gaza on Saturday, targeting nearly 600,000 children, after the virus was again detected in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
The United Nations health agency said no more polio cases had been reported since a 10-month-old child was paralyzed in Gaza last August.
But it said that poliovirus had been found again in wastewater samples taken in the Gaza Strip in December and January, “signalling ongoing circulation in the environment, putting children at risk.”
“The presence of the virus still poses a risk to children with low or no immunity, in Gaza and throughout the region.”
A new campaign would therefore take place from February 22 to 26, with the aim of reaching more than 591,000 children with oral polio vaccines, it said.
The aim was to reach all children under 10, including those previously missed, “to close immunity gaps and end the outbreak,” it said, adding that another vaccination round was planned for April.
Poliovirus, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly infectious and potentially fatal.
It can cause deformities and paralysis and mainly affects children under the age of five.
After the August case was reported, brief localized pauses in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza were agreed to allow for two vaccination rounds in the territory in September and October.
Those rounds reached more than 95 percent of the children targeted, WHO said.
But it warned that some areas in the north, including Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, were inaccessible for the second vaccination round.
As a result around 7,000 children had not received their necessary second dose.
The ceasefire in effect since January 19 “means health workers have considerably better access now,” WHO said.
The agency stressed that “pockets of individuals with low or no immunity provide the virus an opportunity to continue spreading and potentially cause disease.”
“The current environment in Gaza, including overcrowding in shelters and severely damaged water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure, which facilitates fecal-oral transmission, create ideal conditions for further spread of poliovirus,” it warned.
It warned that the movement of people after the current ceasefire could help spread the virus.
WHO stressed that there are no risks to vaccinating a child more than once.
“Each dose gives additional protection which is needed during an active polio outbreak.”


Egypt says Gaza should be rebuilt without displacing Palestinians

Updated 19 February 2025
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Egypt says Gaza should be rebuilt without displacing Palestinians

  • “We stressed the importance of the international community adopting a plan to reconstruct the Gaza strip without displacing Palestinians,” President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said
  • UNRWA said its operations in the Gaza Strip and West Bank will suffer

DUBAI: Egypt’s president called on the international community on Wednesday to adopt a plan to rebuild war-torn Gaza without displacing Palestinians, after a proposal by US President Donald Trump angered Arabs with his own vision for the enclave.
“We stressed the importance of the international community adopting a plan to reconstruct the Gaza strip without displacing Palestinians — I repeat, without displacing Palestinians from their lands,” President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi told a press conference with Spain’s prime minister in Madrid.
Trump has proposed a plan to redevelop the tiny enclave into an international beach resort after resettling its Palestinian inhabitants. He called on Jordan and Egypt to take in Palestinians.
Egypt and Jordan, along with other Arab states, rejected the plan and said they will work on an alternative to counter Trump’s proposal, but there are no signs they are making serious progress.
El-Sisi added that the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA), which provides aid, health and education services to millions in the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab countries of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, was indispensable for Palestinians.
UNRWA said its operations in the Gaza Strip and West Bank will suffer after an Israeli law banned it in October on Israeli land — including East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in a move not recognized internationally — and contact with Israeli authorities from Jan. 30.
The United Arab Emirates’ President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan told the United States’ secretary of state Marco Rubio on Wednesday that his country rejects a proposal to displace Palestinians from their land, the Emirati state news agency WAM reported.
The leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Qatar are expected to discuss the plan in Riyadh this month before it can be presented to an Arab League summit in Cairo in March.


Suspected Somali pirates seize a new Yemeni fishing boat in second recent attack

Updated 19 February 2025
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Suspected Somali pirates seize a new Yemeni fishing boat in second recent attack

  • Piracy off the Somali coast peaked in 2011 when 237 attacks were reported

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Suspected Somali pirates have seized another Yemeni fishing boat off the Horn of Africa, authorities said.
In a statement late Tuesday, a European naval force known as EUNAVFOR Atalanta said the attack targeted a dhow, a traditional ship that plies the waters of the Mideast, off the town of Eyl in Somalia.
It said the attack Monday remained under investigation. It comes 10 days after another pirate attack on another Yemeni fishing boat which ultimately ended with the pirates fleeing and the mariners on board being recovered unhurt.
Piracy off the Somali coast peaked in 2011 when 237 attacks were reported. Somali piracy in the region at the time cost the world’s economy some $7 billion — with $160 million paid out in ransoms, according to the Oceans Beyond Piracy monitoring group.
The threat was diminished by increased international naval patrols, a strengthening central government in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, and other efforts.
However, Somali pirate attacks have resumed at a greater pace over the last year, in part due to the insecurity caused by Yemen’s Houthi rebels launching their attacks in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
In 2024, there were seven reported incidents off Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau.


After decades in exile, Syria’s Jews visit Damascus

Updated 19 February 2025
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After decades in exile, Syria’s Jews visit Damascus

  • The new authorities have said all of Syria’s communities will play a role in their country’s future
  • The synagogues and Jewish school in the Old City remained relatively well-preserved

DAMASCUS: For the first time in three decades, Rabbi Joseph Hamra and his son Henry read from a Torah scroll in a synagogue in the heart of Syria’s capital Damascus, carefully passing their thumbs over the handwritten text as if still in awe they were back home.
The father and son fled Syria in the 1990s, after then-Syrian president Hafez Assad lifted a travel ban on the country’s historic Jewish community, which had faced decades of restrictions including on owning property or holding jobs.
Virtually all of the few thousand Jews in Syria promptly left, leaving less than 10 in the Syrian capital. Joseph and Henry — just a child at the time — settled in New York.
“Weren’t we in a prison? So we wanted to see what was on the outside,” said Joseph, now 77, on his reasons for leaving at the time. “Everyone else who left with us is dead.”
But when Assad’s son and successor as president Bashar Assad was toppled in December, the Hamra family began planning a once-unimaginable visit to Damascus with the help of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based advocacy group.
They met with Syria’s deputy foreign minister at the ministry, now managed by caretaker authorities installed by the Islamist rebels who ousted Assad after more than 50 years of family rule that saw itself as a bastion of secular Arab nationalism.
The new authorities have said all of Syria’s communities will play a role in their country’s future. But incidents of religious intolerance and reports of conservative Islamists proselytizing in public have kept more secular-minded Syrians and members of minority communities on edge.
Henry Hamra, now aged 48, said Syria’s foreign ministry had now pledged to protect Jewish heritage.
“We need the government’s help, we need the government’s security and it’s going to happen,” he said.
Walking through the narrow passages of the Old City, a UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site, Henry and Joseph ran into their onetime neighbors — Palestinian Syrians — and later marveled at hand-painted Hebrew lettering at several synagogues.
“I want to see my kids come back and see this beautiful synagogue. It’s a work of art,” said Henry.
But some things were missing, he said, including a golden-lettered Torah from one of the synagogues that was now stored in a library in Israel, to where thousands of Syrian Jews fled throughout the 20th century.
While the synagogues and Jewish school in the Old City remained relatively well-preserved, Syria’s largest synagogue in Jobar, an eastern suburb of Damascus, was reduced to rubble during the nearly 14-year civil war that erupted after Assad’s violent suppression of protests against him.
Jobar was home to a large Jewish community for hundreds of years until the 1800s and the synagogue, built in honor of the biblical prophet Elijah, was looted before it was destroyed.