Egypt's sunken antiquities threatened by ship waste

[DJKeefy]

Oil spills and waste pose harm to Alexandria's ruins, including one of the seven wonders of the ancient world - Pharos Lighthouse. Archaeologist plan on displaying the treasures of the fabled city, but only if the antiquities remain undamaged.

phpBB [video]

Alexandria's eastern harbour is one of the oldest ports in the world. But divers and archaeologists on a mission to preserve history are more interested in what lies below the surface – the legendary old city of Alexandria in Egypt.

A team of Egyptian archaeologists is working to preserve sunken antiquities – nearly 11,000 of them – on the sea floor off Alexandria. The site is part of the submerged palace complex believed to have been the home of Queen Cleopatra.

The palace was submerged following an earthquake in the 5th Century.

Egypt's government hopes that along with the ruins in Alexandria, the ancient palace will help draw up to 12 million tourists a year.

But it is threatened by a growing amount of waste.

Source: http://www.trtworld.com/mea/egypts-sunk ... ste-382161

[newcastle]

A strange first paragraph to the article...reads to me as if the archaeologists will not/cannot continue their work or recover artifacts unless the pollution problem is tackled.

Who said this?

Pollution - particularly oil - is a problem in a busy harbour and certainly won't benefit the sunken ruins. It's also a problem for marine life in the Red Sea and the knock-on consequences for tourism are obvious.

Hopefully, the Egyptian authorities are mindful of the dangers of pollution to some of their greatest assets and will take measures to lessen its impact.

[Dusak]

And if they do, hopefully they will be strict enforceable penalties towards those offenders. Like when I took my first cruse on the Nile, and observations over the years when the cruse business was alive and active. At night men would throw overboard vast amounts of black bin bags containing all the different categories of waste that that particular cruiser produced each day. The water police saw this, as did countless tourists, but nothing was done to enforce what was then a serious crime and carried high level of fines for the owner of the boats. The problem is, in this country you only have the few that want to see change, battling against the many that see it as a waste of time, money and cuts into a firms profits, profits that are usually generated by those ministers within the government that have private business interests outside.