Israeli report warns of deterioration in Red Sea corals

An Israeli annual national monitoring indicated a deterioration in coral reefs off the Red Sea coast near the southernmost resort city of Eilat, Israel's Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a statement on Thursday, reported Xinhua.

The monitoring, jointly carried out by the ministry and Eilat's Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences, found that the coral population is facing threats from the continuous warming of seawater, the accumulation of pollutants deep in the sea, extreme storms, and marine diseases.

The report, based on the monitoring output of the year 2022, pointed to distortions in the structure of corals' calcareous skeletons.

It estimated the cause could be the pollution originating from metals of fish cages and the Kinet channel on the north coast of Eilat, which drains and transports floodwater from the nearby Arava valley.

The report also warned of a possible disease that might harm the fish as a previous disease severely harmed the sea urchin population in the area earlier this year.

It recommended reducing the existing and planned development on Eilat's beaches, with an emphasis on reducing the effect of artificial lighting on marine life.

The authors of the report also expressed concern that the expansion of the planned activity of the desalination plant in Eilat, for the irrigated agricultural areas in the Arava to the north, will increase the amounts of nitrogen and salinity discharged into the sea, thus harming the corals.

The report, therefore, proposed formulating a sustainable management plan for the water sector in the region and enabling agriculture to develop in a way that brings no harm to the coral reef.