Oil Slicks Affect Fujairah Tourism

Much mention has been made of the far too frequent oil slicks that have washed up on Fujairah beaches, causing hotels to close their beaches and diving companies to shut while they clean up.

If readers want to see how oil slicks affect tourism on the personal level here is an excerpt from a blog posting written today (8 June 2008) by an American family living in Abu Dhabi:

“Yesterday I ended up reading the new English-language newspaper that just came out here. It’s called The National and I learned so much about some things that are going on here. Like a huge issue [here is the article] they are having with ships dumping oily waste into the Gulf and the beaches of Fujairah are often streaked with oil. They haven’t even caught one dumper yet because the ships venture out beyond the reach of the UAE Coast Guard and dump. Basically the consensus is “don’t swim in the water”, but that doesn’t seem like an acceptable solution to a huge environmental problem. I tried to imagine reading the same story, but the oil being on the beaches of San Diego and practically laughed out loud at such an absurd thought. But it isn’t just because we keep all of our environmentalists in San Francisco, and they’d be there in a few hours to protest such mayhem. It’s because we have agencies and checks in place to prevent such a thing from happening… We were talking about heading up to Fujairah one of these weekends to hang out on the beaches at a resort; now I am beginning to rethink that.”

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: Photo from an article on oil slicks in different parts of the world.