On Monday, a Turkish research vessel concluded a second round of work in conducting a survey of fish stocks in Lebanese territorial waters.
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The work of the “Mediterranean Research 1” ship of the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry lasted 15 days as part of cooperation between the Lebanese government and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) with a team of Lebanese experts.
Lebanese Minister of Agriculture Abbas Hajj Hassan expressed “thanks to the Turkish government and the ship’s team for this assistance, as Turkey is the main partner with FAO, the Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research and the Lebanese government represented by the Ministry of Agriculture.”
He stressed “the importance of this day for all the Lebanese, and specifically for the fishermen, as it establishes a real maritime work in fishing so that this sector becomes promising by drawing the possibilities that exist in the Lebanese sea.”
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Since 2019, the Lebanese have been experiencing an unprecedented severe economic crisis that has led to a record collapse in the value of the local currency against the dollar, as well as a shortage of fuel and medicine, and a sharp decline in the purchasing power of citizens.
Hajj Hassan stated that his country “aspires to a partnership with advanced countries in the field of marine fishing, led by Turkey.”
He revealed a “memorandum of understanding between the two governments will be signed soon in this field.”
He praised “the very important Turkish experiences, especially with regard to the marine world and animal production.”
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As for the captain of the Turkish ship, Ali Osbulat, he said, “The ship started working in the Lebanese territorial waters on the third of this month by surveying an area of about 650 miles from the coast of Tripoli in northern Lebanon to the city of Sidon in the south.”
While the Turkish researcher on board the ship, Coşkun Menderes Aydin, said: “We are in Lebanon for the second time to conduct environmental investigations about the appropriate places for fishing on the Lebanese coast in cooperation with FAO and the Lebanese government to make comparisons with other regions of the Mediterranean.”
He explained that “the team on board the ship collects two types of data, the first on the types and density of fish, and the second on the biology of the fish.”
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He continued, “The data is quickly verified on board the ship as soon as it is collected after fishing operations carried out by the team, in addition to other operations implemented by the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture, in order to integrate the data later and issue studies on the existing ecosystem.”
