Fish farmers in the Nile River Delta: Empty lakes and dirty waters

Egypt has a long tradition of fisheries. Fishing and fish farming along the Nile River, in its adjacent lakes, and along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea has been a common practice for millennia and remains a major source of food for many Egyptians. On paper, the fisheries sector in 2023 is healthier than ever before, with a significant recent increase in aquaculture activities (e.g., fish farms) in Egypt’s fertile Nile River Delta. Nevertheless, local fish farmers are facing mounting pressures: Year after year, their fish are getting smaller and less healthy, their production decreases, and they are forced to take out loans they are later unable to pay back. The people who for generations have worked a job that represents an important economic and cultural value for Egypt today suffer from a combination of climate-related and man-made stresses. This not only poses a serious threat to their own livelihoods but also imperils Egypt’s overall water, food, and economic security. The Egyptian government’s recent efforts to invest heavily in aquaculture, though intended to address future food shortages, may only worsen the position of local fish farmers in the Delta.

Pressures on Delta fish farmers

Long-standing problems in the Delta

The Nile River Delta is a fertile region that stretches 240 kilometers (150 miles) along the Mediterranean coast of northern Egypt and covers 22,000 sq km. And though this only represents between 2% and 3% of Egypt’s total area, the Delta is home to around 40% of the country’s 107 million inhabitants and is central to its economy. The fisheries, aquaculture, agriculture, and tourism sectors in the Delta contribute to 20% of Egypt’s GDP.

As a relatively small region with an outsized economic importance, the Delta has become very crowded in recent decades, leading to significant competition over land use between the agricultural, fisheries, and urban development sectors. The Egyptian authorities have generally prioritized the latter, and the consequent rapid urbanization has gradually compelled fishermen to turn to fish farming in legally restricted areas.

In addition to intensifying competition over land, urbanization in the Nile Delta has worsened Egypt’s water quality. Years of lax and inadequate government regulation around the dumping of industrial waste, toxic chemicals, and sewage water, together with sharp increases in household and industrial waste due to urban expansion, have heavily polluted most of the water flowing through the Delta’s 53,000 km of irrigation canals. This water is dangerous to the health of local people, animals, and plants, and it directly affects fisheries. The contaminated water that infiltrates fish farms impacts the health and quality of the fish; infects them with viral, bacterial, and fungal diseases; and, indirectly, introduces dangerous heavy metals into fish stocks that far exceed healthy limits for humans. As a means of managing water shortages in the Delta, the Egyptian government decided in the 1990s that the relatively cleaner irrigation water from the Nile may only be used for agriculture. This leaves fish farmers with no choice but to use highly polluted water from drainage canals.