Anthropogenic enhancement of Egypt's Mediterranean fishery.
The highly productive coastal Mediterranean fishery off the Nile River delta collapsed after the completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1965. But the fishery has been recovering dramatically since the mid-1980s, coincident with large increases in fertilizer application and sewage discharge in Egypt. We use stable isotopes of nitrogen (delta(15)N) to demonstrate that 60%-100% of the current fishery production may be from primary production stimulated by nutrients from fertilizer and sewage runoff. Although the establishment of the dam put Egypt in an ideal position to observe the impact of rapid increases in nutrient loading on coastal productivity in an extremely oligotrophic sea, the Egyptian situation is not unique. Such anthropogenically enhanced fisheries also may occur along the northern rim of the Mediterranean and offshore of some rapidly developing tropical countries, where nutrient concentrations in the coastal waters were previously very low.
Oczkowski
Autumn J
AJ
Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI 02882, USA. ajo@gso.uri.edu
Nixon
Scott W
SW
Granger
Stephen L
SL
El-Sayed
Abdel-Fattah M
AF
McKinney
Richard A
RA
D000818:Animals; D002247:Carbon Isotopes / Q000032:analysis; D004534:Egypt; D005308:Fertilizers; D005398:Fisheries; D005399:Fishes; D008522:Mediterranean Sea; D009587:Nitrogen Isotopes / Q000032:analysis
D002247:Carbon Isotopes; D005308:Fertilizers; D009587:Nitrogen Isotopes