IT is a stirring, or perhaps disturbing, thought that everyone on the planet will, by one learned estimate, have at least a couple of atoms in them that once belonged to Leonardo Da Vinci, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra. There are probably a cluster of atoms from lesser luminaries as well including Vlad the Impaler — but the point is that in the closed ecosystem that is earth, we cannot escape being connected to each other.
Closer to home, have you ever wondered what the black line in the middle of a locally caught prawn is? The chances are that at least some of it is you. Just south of the King Faisal Naval Base, there’s a two-meter diameter pipe at a depth of 50 meters below the surface of the Red Sea. It pumps out, we are reliably informed, about 60,000 cubic meters of “suspended organic solids” — feces by another name — industrial waste, toxic components and heavy metals that do not, by being deep under water and away from public view, go away.
Not only is this discharge of raw domestic and commercial waste environmentally unfriendly, it is socially irresponsible and potentially life threatening, but not to prawns or flamingos, which treasure it as a food source.
“The recent huge increase in organic pollution has caused the underwater visibility to decrease from an average of 20 meters to 6-8 meters,” said one environmental expert who has dived on the pie and southward.
“The Red Sea up to 100 miles (150 km) away is turning green. Algae blooms are smothering the coral reefs and suffocating it and this effect is compounded by the reduced visibility caused by plankton which is reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the photosynthesizing corals — and they are dying off.” The organic solids float southward, dragged by the prevailing northwest current that passes Jeddah and moves along the coast toward Al-Laith and Jazan. Some solids, through eddying shore currents, flow back toward Al Hamra Beach. Other local currents precipitate thousands of tons of brown ooze on the coral shore to the immediate south of the King Faisal Naval Base where flamingos gather to feast off the shrimps and gastropods that feed of the waste.
They eat it and we eat them, along with a variety of other locally caught fish. The local fresh fish market of the Corniche is positively awash with people blissfully unaware of what they are buying and consuming.
It seems that three more of these deep-water outfall pipes are planned for a site to the north of the existing pipeline and the contracts drawn up if not already signed. There are, sources say, no matching treatment plants planned for some considerable time.
Now, I don’t mind nibbling the odd molecule of Cleopatra or an atom or two of Helen of Troy, but as to you dear reader well, we haven’t been properly introduced!
