Effect of Tourism Activities on Coral Communities at the Gulf of Suez, Red Sea

Although the rapidly expanding tourism industry is considered an extremely important economic activity, it caused increasing pressure on coral reefs of Egypt. Damage occurs from both direct and indirect impacts of tourism activities on coral communities. The Gulf of Suez has increasing of resorts from 8 at 2000 to 31 at 2014. This affected the coral communities along the area of study leads to a decrease in coral areas from 960 m2 at 2000 to 750 m2 at 2014, number of coral species from 21 species at 2000 to only 14 species at 2014, percentage cover of life coral from 46.4% at 2000 to 10.6% at 2014;on contrary, dead coral increased from 23.8% to 47.9% at the same period. This accompanied with an increase in the percentage of the algal cover from 8.6% at 2000 to 19.4% at 2014. The statistical analysis revealed a high correlation between the increased tourism activities and the coral status variables measured during the study. The data obtained showed high significant positive and negative correlation between the different variables that determined according to the effect of the different variables on each other and the relation between them. The simple linear regression statistical analyses showed a significant effect of tourism activities on the coral status, the analyses indicated that each increase in number of resorts by one resort leads to significant decrease in total coral area at the site by 0.9%, the analysis also showed that 80% of that decrease referred to the effect of tourism activities and 20% referred to other reasons. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) divided the recoded coral species into three categories, the first is soft corals which recorded significant increase in percentage cover from 2000 to 2014, the second is three species that recorded insignificant difference during the period of study, while the third category include most of the recorded species and they showed significant decrease in their percentage cover along time of study. The data obtained illustrated that all the investigated coral parameters are affected by the increasing tourism activities.

Assess the Main Factors Affecting the International Marina of Taba Heights at the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea, Egypt

The increase in maritime traffic means that ports have to continuously improve their efficiency. This involves reducing the inactivity caused by adverse conditions that affect its operation and maintenance which includes the sedimentation rate, the shallow depth, water current regimes and tidal cycle. This study examines the hypothesis that these factors could affect Taba Heights international marina. The results showed that the harbor offered very good protection against sediment deposition (rate of sediment deposition ranging from 0.2 to 1.9 mg·cm-2·day-1) and currents (two main currents having opposite directions, the first at bearing 261 degree North with mean speed of 3.5 cm/sec., the second at bearing 85 degree North with mean speed of 4.5 cm/sec), while it had a suitable tidal range (0.3 m for neap tidal range and 0.9 m for spring tidal range). The bathymetric study of the marina area showed deeper water at the approaching channel (3.5 to 4.0 meters deep) and inside the marina (3.0 - 4.0 m) than the surrounding marine areas (0.5 to 1.5 meters). The data obtained illustrated that all the investigated factors had limited effect on the operation of Taba Hieghts international marina.

Bioaccumulation of Heavy Metals in Fish, Squids and Crustaceans from the Red Sea, Jeddah Coast, Saudi Arabia

Concentration of Cadmium, Copper, Lead, Zinc and Mercury were determined in the muscles, gills and liver of ten fish species (Epinephelus areolatus, Epinephelus radiates, Anthias squamipinnis, Plectorhinchus chaetodonoides, Snubnose emperor, Dicentrarchus labrax, Acanthopagrus bifasciatus, lutjanus kasmira, lutjanus ehrenbergii and Acanthurus gahhm) as well as three specimens of crustaceans (Metapenaeus dalli, Panulirus penicillatus and Portunus petagicus) and two Specimens of squids (Parateuthis tunicate and Chtenopteryx sicula) collected from Jeddah coastal water during 2014. The obtained results declared that, the average concentrations of heavy metals were as follows: Cd (0.098, 0.20, 0.106), Cu (0.358, 0.327, 1.536), Pb (0.3, 0.257, 0.196), Zn (3.00, 7.390, 4.999) μg/g wet weight in the muscle, gills and liver, respectively. While, the concentration of Hg was invariably undetectable in all samples of different organs of the collected fish species. The average concentration of Cd, Cu, Pb, Zn and Hg in the soft part of the investigated crustaceans (Metapenaeus dalli, Panulirus penicillatus and Portunus petagicus) and squids (Parateuthis tunicate and Chtenopteryx sicula) were relatively higher compared with the muscle tissues in the examined fish species. The results of bioconcentration factor (BCFs) indicated that among examined metals Zn was the most readily absorbed by fish and the highest BAFs for examined fish species were determined in gill of Snubnose emperor.

Efficient Removal of La(III) and Nd(III) from Aqueous Solutions Using Carbon Nanoparticles

Environmental pollution caused by release of toxic metals (rare earth elements, etc.) into aquatic environment as a result of industrial activity is one of the serious global issues, thus development of different efficient methods for removal of these metals from wastewaters seems to be important subject today. Carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) are well-known to have the superior adsorption efficiency toward heavy metals in aqueous solution. However, little research has been dedicated to exploit their use for the removal of rare earth elements (REEs) from contaminated water. Therefore, the environmental application of CNPs to remove Lanthanum (La III) and Neodymium (Nd III) from wastewater was performed. In this work, Adsorption experiments were carried out by batch mode adsorption to investigate the influence of different conditions that enhanced the adsorption of La(III) and Nd(III) by CNPs such as pH of solution, adsorbent dose, contact time, and initial concentration of investigated rare earth elements. The obtained results showed that the optimum adsorption for the removal both studied metals from contaminated water were 0.02 g/25 ml of CNPs at pH 7.0 after 40 min of adsorption. This work demonstrates that CNPs can be considered as potential adsorbents to target metal ions from wastewater.