Les pêcheries et le milieu marin dans le secteur méditerranéen de la république Arabe Unie

Before 1958, hydrology and halieutic research in Egypt, was mainly restricted to the brackish lakes of the delta and the surroundings of Alexandria. They resulted in a number of publications gathered under the title "The fishing grounds near Alexandria" in the Notes and Memories of the Institute of Alexandria. The marine sector, coastal and off-shore, of Mediterranean Egypt stayed practically ignored by oceanographers. However, the increasing food needs of the United Arab Republic increased the interest of national public powers and scientists for the marine sector which should provide large quantities of food, fish and other marine animals, to the Republic's market. This is the reason why, in 1957, during the International Fishing Gear Congress of Hamburg, contacts were established between the author, as the Egyptian representative, and the Yugoslavian representatives for the setting up of a research service in the Egyptian area with the vessels "Ovcica" and "Golobica", from 1959 to 1961, in the eastern part of the U.A.R. coasts. Followed other oceanographic cruises with the Japanese vessel "Shoyo-Maru", in the central and western sectors in 1959, and the vessels of the Institute of Alexandria, the "Faras-el-Bahr" between 1959 and 1961 in the central sector, and the 'Dolphin", in 1962, in the western region. These cruises followed a program aimed at determining the size and nature of the trawlable bottoms of the Egyptian continental shelf, as well as studying its hydrology, in order to define the environmental conditions governing the biology and ecology of the exploitable edible marine species. At the same time, a quantitative and qualitative study was conducted, through trawl fisheries at different levels, with a specific research of nectobenthic forms of a greater interest from a fishing point of view. The Institute of Alexandria entrusted me with the organisation and realisation of these works. I carried them out with the help of the Institute's staff. The results obtained are the subject of this publication.