Authorities clean 3.2M sqm of Manzala Lake in Damietta

CAIRO – 19 July 2017: The General Authority for Fishery Resources cleaned 3.2 million square meters of Manzala Lake in Damietta, and encroachments on the lake are being removed, announced the head of the authority’s branch in Damietta governorate, Maher Sorial, on Wednesday.

Sorial said that cleaning works are assumed by the fish resources authority and the Armed Forces Engineering Authority.

For Manzala Lake, the former cleaned an area of 1.4 million square meters and the latter did the rest.

Procedures to improve the water quality have been taking place for several months in Manzala Lake, which is one of the main fishing destinations in Egypt.

The head of the Agricultural, Irrigation and Fishing Workers Syndicate in Damietta, Awad El Alamy, told Egypt Today on July 8 that the improvement in the lake’s water quality would make it possible for it to produce sea bass, shrimp and Tilapia.

The lake’s surface used to be 750,000 feddans (1 feddan = 1,025 acres), but decreased due to illegal urban expansions and encroachments to 182,000 feddans in 2009, consequently dropping to 120,000 feddans in 2014, according to the General Authority for Fisheries Resources website.

According to 2011 data, it used to produce 60,000 tons of fish per year. The fish species living in the lake are typically sea bass, shrimp, crab, Tilapia, Mugilidae, Nile Perch, and Grass Carp.