Egypt

Abstract

The Egyptian Red Sea ecosystem and the fisheries catches in its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) are presented from 1950 to 2010. Five fisheries sectors are identified and their catch reconstructed by taxonomic group. Published papers, gray literature, reports, databases and on-site observations were used as sources. Where data gaps were identified, they were accommodated with assumptions based on the best available knowledge, which are clearly stated and can be substituted by different ones given better information. The result showed that purse seining is the dominant fishery, followed by trawling, subsistence, artisanal and recreational fisheries. The total catch of Egypt in its Red Sea EEZ was around 6000 t · year⁻¹ in the early 1950s, which rapidly increased in 1960 and remained at a high level except for a sharp decline in 1973 due to the Israel-Arab war. The peak catch of about 50,000 t was obtained in 1993; catches then declined to about 25,000 t · year⁻¹ by the end of 2000s. A total of 42 taxonomic groups were identified in the catches, in addition to many which could not be individually identified and were categorized as ‘others’. Horse mackerel, scads and other jacks, and herring jointly accounted for 34 % of the total catch. The estimated total catch was compared with data Egypt submitted to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and clear differences were observed. While the reconstructed total catch is, overall, 1.1 times what Egypt submitted to FAO, this relatively close match masks a much stronger dominance of the reconstructed over the official catches from 1950 to the mid-1990s, followed by a period of high official catches, which includes fish caught outside Egypt’s Red Sea EEZ.