JEDDAH, 26 December 2002 — Fish have been discovered close inshore to the Jeddah coastline badly deformed and with body parts eaten away by organisms that usually live on raw sewage.

Sea lice, minute organisms that attach themselves to fish and feed on their living flesh, have manifested their presence in the reef-dwelling food fish to the north of Jeddah.

A marine life expert and photographer, Hagen Shcmit, said that these lice normally live in the heavily polluted silt found near sewage outfalls and commercial fish farms, where they live of partly decomposed excrement.

"This is the first time I have seen them in the open sea in the Jeddah area," said Hagen, who has been recording and photographing the reefs of the Red Sea off Saudi Arabia for 30 years. "There has been a continuous decline of marine life over that period."

"In the south of Jeddah, raw sewage is floating into the sea and former healthy coral reefs have been destroyed by nutrient laden water." Arba’een Lagoon and the coast off the South Corniche display the all too visible proof of the ‘nutrient,’ in the form of untreated human waste dumped directly into the sea.

The proliferation of sea lice is a direct result of this. Now they are attacking our food chain. The results of sewage and waste dumping have come full cycle.

"The now polluted waters encourage the growth of these minute creatures. Small fish, crabs and worms feed on some of these creatures and predatory fish feed in turn on these smaller creatures. There is a cumulative process of concentrating heavy metals and toxins that end up in the larger fish. They in turn end up on our dinner table."

These are the fish the public eats. The damage done by the sea lice is visible, poisonous and a warning that the accumulation has distorted the environmental balance of the reef system.

The accumulation of toxins is not visible in fish, but it has devastating effects.

W. A. Mofida in a 2002 study on the levels of heavy metals in the Saudi diet published in the Saudi Chemical Journal found that there was a significant concentration of mercury in fish. When added to the same poisonous metal concentrations in the rest of the average diet, the daily intake was higher than the recommendations of the World Health Organization.

Mercury is a cumulative poison that when taken in even minute quantity can lead to genetic deformity at birth in children. It was the cause of thousands of deaths and deformities, potentially up to 30,000, after it was dumped in Minimata Bay in Japan and spread to the fish in the Shiranui Sea.

Faisal Ashouli, director of roads and maintenance, said in early December that he believes creating two sewage canals would help solve Jeddah’s waste disposal problem. He also justifies the resulting dumping of the untreated sewage directly into the sea by saying that "to save people and property it is the only option."

The lice ridden fish, the increasing levels of toxins in fish and the Saudi diet in general with their potentially disastrous consequences are no longer a theoretical threat. They are here and now. The Minimata incident demonstrates what inaction can and has done.