Sharm El Sheik Fishing Net Appeal!!

[froggie01]

Hi all,

I went kayaking over near garden near Naama Bay to snorkel on my last day in Egypt (10/10/2011) and I spotted a fishing net between Near Garden and Middle Garden. It's about 100m long, it's attached to a rock near the second beach from Naama Bay. It's sitting right over the table of coral in about 50cm of water, rolled around the coral so it'll stay in place and kept afloat with small red buoys. I discovered it in the evening and although there was fish caught in there some still alive I could not take care of it. I did borrow a knife from a snorkeling boat nearby but had to give it back fairly promptly as they were leaving.
For the dive instructors/divers/snorkelers out there in Sharm, is there any way a small group could organise themselves to take it out? It's not an impossible task at all.
I've already emailed the CDWS and had them phoned by 2 dive operators, RSDC and Werner Lau but it seems CDWS are about to shut down. This is will stay in place until our community takes it out. Please circulate this news so the fishing net is taken out!

Btw, the diving/snorkeling boat nearby could not see the net as the red buoys are quite small, I had to kayak onto it to spot it. I believe the place is also accessible by road.

 

[Crowley]

Thanks for the info froggie - I haven't heard this but will ask around.

Was it present during the day? I don't visit Fiddle/Middle very often and have been out of the water for a few weeks so I haven't had a chance to look but Emperor, Camel and Ocean college are there very regularly so I would be surprised if there was something there that they hadn't noticed.

The beach in question is in front of the Hyatt which is where the fatal shark attack took place so it's possible that this has been erected as a shark defense, give that we're coming into that time of year again, and sadly it won't be the first such net in Sharm.

Sadly, organising a sabotage mission would be next to impossible. The area is pretty busy in the daytime so for sure somebody would be spotted, and access after dark would only be possible from the hotel. If the net has been put there with permission from somebody higher up the food chain, then getting caught would have serious repercussions for any dive centre involved.

The only way to make a difference is for enough people to start shouting - although having said that, it made no difference whatsoever to anybody after reports of the first shark net in Na'ama bay were published in the international dive media. :-( Right now, there is very little in the way of authority present in the area, and that is easily bought out of....

Will see what I can find out - thanks for letting us know.

Cheers

C.

 

[froggie01]

hi, thanks for your reply. Actually I believe the nearest hotel is the sofitel. When you are on the beach of the sofitel, you take a left along the coast and come accross near garden. This has nothing to do with shark protection of any kind, the net is not in an arc around coastline, it's just going outward towards the open sea but it's not that long so it's just sitting on the reef table. There was a nice lobster trapped in there, puffer fish, lazor fishes and so on, all the fauna you can expect on the reef. As mentioned previously the net is not visible from the boat and diving operators don't normally take their groups of snorkelers this close to the shore, they seem to stay above the drop off.

No one would be able to stand for that net so there is no way you'd get into trouble taking it out, it's obviously highly illegal for it to be there. I imagine whoever is behind it is selling the fish/lobster to local restaurants and making quite a bit of money illegally and obviously harming the environment in the process. I'll remind you that the coast is protected with fishing forbidden within 4KM of the shore. Please get a gang out there and take it out. Thanks for keeping us posted!

 

[Crowley]

by happenstance I was on our local boat today and we spent 20 minutes idling off the beach you mention. From your description, that beach is still in Na'ama Bay, before Near Garden, and then Middle Garden is actually around the corner.
I saw the buoys you mentioned - but we never dive there (I don't think there's any boat diving to be had there) so it remains the preserve of swimmers and glass-bottom boats.

This was at around 1pm this afternoon and although of course I couldn't see the nets from the boat, there did seem to be an excessive amount of buoys around the beach which coincides with your experience. I am going to guess this was one of the ham-fisted attempts to protect snorkelers from sharks and a number of ropes and at least one other net in Na'ama Bay. After the fatal shark attack last year and before the Revolution, hotels were only allowed to permit snorkeling in areas to a maximum of 2 metres of depth.

One other hotel in the bay has put up a net for exactly this purpose so at the moment that's my best guess. They've never been removed, and people break the rules all the time, but the nets remain and sadly, they do indeed trap fish. :-(

If I hear anything more I will of course let you know.

Cheers

C.

 

[froggie01]

ok, thanks for your contribution. Can sharks swim in 50-70 cm of water? Because that's what this net is sitting in. I saw a boat of snorkelers and I believe a dive boat nearby. I indentified the beach as near/middle garden looking at a snorkeling book at Sharm but maybe I got the name wrong.

 

[divebunnie]

In answer to your question Froggie, yes sharks can swim in 50cm of water, (well the juveniles can), however the bigger ones are less likely to want to do that for fear of getting beached. Hence the ruling about snorkelling shallow.

But as Crowley has mentioned, the area that you have described does not sound like an area that we can access via normal routes. It sounds like it is exclusive to the Sofitel Hotel. We dive off Naama Bay regularly and dive from Middle to Near Garden regularly too, and should I find this net during one of my dives, I would be sure to do what I could to remove it. However without the support of the CDWS, it would be a little difficult to steam in and remove the net.

Hopefully, once things have settled down a touch, we will once more find ourselves armed with a support group on whom we can trust to uphold all these rules, however at the moment, there appears to be no one we can turn to, sadly.

 

[Crowley]

As DiveBunnie says - yes, Sharks can swim in shallow water - in fact last year before the series of Shark attacks in December we heard reports of a young girl who was snorkeling over the reef plate at Tower and was bitten (not seriously injured) by what was identified as an Oceanic White Tip. This is for sure not characteristic behaviour for the Oceanics, but neither were the other attacks. Also, some of the guides here saw a large shark (from the boat) not far from the beach you describe.

However - please remember that the nets were more of a token gesture in the direction of reassuring beach-goers that the area is "protected" - what the nets/ropes/rules actually accomplished was of little consequence to the hotels in terms of the damage it might do to the local environment, but more of an attempt to ensure that they did not lose business (and therefore money) by letting people have access to the reef. During a meeting with a member of the National Parks Authority after the shark attacks, I was told that money had been allocated to fence off the entire bay that we know as The Gardens, since the fatal attack happened close to the beach at Middle Garden. Fortunately, this never happened, and then the Revolution came and all this stuff was sidelined.

I think that's the most likely explanation for this net, although I can't be 100% certain of course.

Cheers

C.

 

[Crowley]

with apologies to the website I stole this map from - just to clarify the local geography - does this look about right?

Cheers

C.

 

[Red Sea Shadow]

Is this the net you're talking about? This is definitely the Near Garden.