Egyptian Fishing Ports Challenges and Opportunities Case Study: Mediterranean Sea Ports

摘要

Fisheries are considered one of the important sources of national income in Egypt. The fishery operates vast tracts of more than 13 million acres and varies according to the nature of these sources, such as Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, lakes and the Nile River. There are 21 Egyptian fishing ports and marinas located on both the Mediterranean coasts and lakes. Only five of these ports have minimum requirements of infrastructure and facilities for accommodating catches, fishing boats, and equipment. This study aims to present the current environmental, planning, and facilities issues for four of the existing artificial and natural Egyptian fishing ports that are located on the Mediterranean Sea in terms of challenges and opportunities. The data are collected from different sources such as the annual reports of the Egyptian General Authority for Fish Resources Development, discussion, and personal interviews with the main stakeholders, and through field survey and visual observation. The results show that the investigated fishing ports are suffering from degradation of catch rates, increase of pollution levels, master planning issues, sedimentation issues, and deterioration of the basic infrastructure as well as a great variance of available facilities. The results spotlight the current conditions of fishing ports in Egypt. In addition, the need for further research to investigate the possibility of improving the offered facilities and the port efficiency towards transfer of Egyptian fishing ports into sustainable and greener ports is presented.