Last night over dinner, a friend alerted me to the story in the local paper about dead fish being found on the public beach by the Burj al Arab. Gulf News reported on this story yesterday and opened the article with “Dozens of beachgoers enjoyed a free seafood dinner on Monday.”
Lifeguards reported that people were running into the water and collecting the dead fish with their bare hands and that it took them 4 hours to clean up the mess.
Now if I saw a slew of dead fish and squid on the beach, I would be very suspicious about how they got there. Note that there is a lot of construction and dredging around the beach where the dead things were found. So I’m thinking some kind of pollution or contamination from this activity.
But here’s what a representative from Dubai Municipality had to say:
“It may have been caused by an algae bloom – a rapid increase in the population of microscopic algae which produces fatal toxins in an aquatic system.
“Or perhaps the fish were rotten and discarded by fishermen unhappy with their appearance.”
Sounds like a red herring to me.
Photo Credit: Gulf News
