Latakia-SANA
The General Authority for Fisheries and Aquarium has taken measures since the beginning of the recent fuel leak into the sea, with the aim of limiting its damage, ensuring the safety of fish and preserving the health of citizens.
The director general of the authority, Dr. Abdul Latif Ali, said in a statement to SANA reporter that since the beginning of the fuel spill into the sea, the authority immediately directed the fish markets monitoring committees and carried out frequent tours and strictly monitored them to ensure the health safety of fish and confiscated and destroyed any fish showing traces of oil spills.
Ali explained that the authority was directed to the protection points of the authority located in the fishing ports and along the Syrian coast to intensify tours on it, communicate and cooperate with fishermen and their associations, and inform them not to fish in places that contain oil slicks.
Ali indicated that through follow-up and repeated tours on the beach and the information received from the centers of Lattakia and Tartous, no case of mass death of fish was observed, but rather it was limited to very few unreliable individual numbers of fish and other aquatic organisms within the areas where the fuel leak occurred, knowing that the fish escape from Unsuitable aquatic environments.
He pointed out that the presence of oil spots was observed in separate places on the beach, especially in small bays, with varying distances from the beach and of little width. And extending mainly from Banias to Jableh, indicating that a large part of the oil slicks were withdrawn and removed from the shore and treated by the competent authorities.
The authority, through the Age Research Center in Tartous, also participated in the cleaning of the beach by the workers and the mechanisms available to it, and thus the combined result of these works was to greatly reduce the potential damage.
Ali pointed out that the authority, in cooperation with Tishreen University, the Higher Institute for Marine Research, took samples of water, sediments and seabeds in the places where oil spills spread to analyze them and find out the impact of the leak on the water environment and its safety. The vitality of some of the oil spill sites from which water samples were previously taken, “Baniyas Corniche, the Syrian Oil Company, Arab Al-Malik Beach and Jableh” by spreading three strains of the disintegrating germs of the oil substance, which were isolated from the Syrian marine waters, and
new samples
will be
taken periodically after 10 and 25 days To know the effect of that treatment on the aquatic environment in those areas.
Through follow-up and repeated tours on the beach, and the information received from the concerned authorities to monitor and remove oil spills, the removal of fuel has been completed from the entire shore of the cities of Jableh and Lattakia, extending from Al-Fakhoura and Arab Al-Malik to the Sports City beach, unless new leak spots appear.
One of the tanks in the Baniyas Electricity Generating Company was exposed late last month to a crack, which led to the leakage of quantities of fuel into the sea, which were controlled by the company's workers and cadres.
Safa Ali
