“GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY”
Reefs off Egypt are hugely popular among divers, and some Red Sea dive sites are operating at up to 40 times their recommended capacity, Hanafy said.
Fishing, another huge pressure, must drop to a sixth of current rates to become sustainable, he said.
For Hanafy, protecting the reef is a “global responsibility” and one which Red Sea tourism businesses – which account for 65 per cent of Egypt’s vital tourism industry – must share.
Local professionals say they have already witnessed damage to parts of the delicate ecosystem.
One solution, Hanafy said, is for the environment ministry to boost protection over a 400 sq km area of corals known as Egypt’s Great Fringing Reef.
More than half already lies within nature reserves or environmentally-administered areas, but creating one continuous protected area would support the coral by “regulating activities and fishing, implementing carrying capacity plans and banning pollution”, Hanafy said.
Further south, off Sudan, a near absence of tourism has shielded pristine corals from polluting boats and the wandering fins of divers.
But, despite their greater resilience, the corals are far from immune to climate change, and the reefs there have experienced several bleaching events over the past three decades.
For Sudan, a country mired in a dire economic and political crisis including a military coup last year, monitoring the coral is “difficult” without funding, Sudan’s Higher Council for the Environment and Natural Resources said.
Off both the Egyptian and Saudi coasts, corals face the threats of coastal development, including sewage and sedimentation from construction runoff, Osman warned.
The great irony, he said, is that, while the natural wonders of the Red Sea corals have drawn tourists and developers, the increased man-made pressures are in turn accelerating their destruction.
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