OMAN: The Gulf of Oman turns green twice a year, when an algae bloom the size of Mexico spreads across the Arabian Sea all the way to India.
Scientists who study the algae say the microscopic organisms are thriving in new conditions brought about by climate change, and displacing the zooplankton that underpin the local food chain, threatening the entire marine ecosystem.
Khalid Al-Hashmi, a marine biologist at the Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, wrinkles his nose as the research vessel nears the bloom. “Sea stench,” he says, referring to the algae’s ammonia secretions. “It’s here, you can smell it.”
He signals the boat to stop as it speeds beneath a gigantic rock arch off the coast of Muscat, the capital of Oman, an arid sultanate on the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. The captain kills the engine and drops anchor into a slick of bright green muck surrounded by crystal-clear blue water.
The swarms of microscopic creatures beneath the surface of the Gulf of Oman were all but invisible 30 years ago — now they form giant, murky shapes that can be seen from satellites.
Across the planet, blooms have wrecked local ecosystems. Algae can paralyze fish, clog their gills, and absorb enough oxygen to suffocate them. Whales, turtles, dolphins and manatees have died, poisoned by algal toxins, in the Atlantic and Pacific. These toxins have infiltrated whole marine food chains and have, in rare cases, killed people, according to the UN science agency.
In the Great Lakes of North America, Thailand and the Seychelles, the algae bloom green. In Florida they are red, in the North Atlantic they are chalky white, and in Puget Sound they are orange. The Irish call it the “sea ghost,” and the Taiwanese refer to the blooms as “blue tears.”
NASA uses satellites and floating robots to monitor the blooms, said Paula Bontempi, the manager for ocean carbon and biology projects at the US space agency. “It’s like a Van Gogh painting,” she said, referring to satellite images of swirls of chlorophyll spiraling across the world’s oceans. “Absolutely beautiful.”
It’s less attractive up close, where it can be “almost guacamole-like” in some lakes. “It smells bad, it looks bad,” she said.
The satellite technology has enabled scientists to link the algae to higher levels of air and water pollution in recent decades, but Bontempi said questions remain. “We know that our Earth is changing,” she said. “It may be in a direction we might not like.”
Scientists based at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University trace Oman’s blooms to melting ice in the Himalayas. Less ice has raised temperatures in South Asia and strengthened the Indian Ocean’s southwest monsoon. As this weather front moves across the Arabian Sea every year, it churned up oxygen-poor water thick with nutrients that have fueled the rise of a 1.2-billion-year old algae called noctiluca scintillans.
For the past 15 years, observatory biogeochemist Joaquim Goes, Al-Hashmi and biological oceanographer Helga do Rosario Gomes have tracked blooms in the Arabian Sea using boats, satellites and remote sensors.
Goes said the blooms have caused a “short-circuiting of the food chain,” endangering other marine life.
“Normally these things happen slowly, usually we talk about tens of hundreds of years. Here it’s happening overnight,” he said. “The transformation is happening before our eyes.”
The algae blooms pose a number of threats to Oman, whose fishing and trading ships have plied these waters for centuries.
Thick blooms reduce visibility, making it difficult for divers to repair undersea gas infrastructure. It can also clog the intake pipes of the desalinization plants that produce up to 90 percent of the country’s fresh water.
Fishermen call Oman’s marine research center when they spot blooms.
Marine ecologist Ahmad Al-Alawi adds these reports to four decades of observations before comparing them with satellite images of the swirling chlorophyll. He says the blooms are growing bigger and lasting longer, displacing the zooplankton at the bottom of the local food chain.
The algae has attracted more whale sharks — a major draw for divers — but many tourists have canceled their trips at the sight of the green, murky waves, said Ollie Clarke, a dive instructor at the Bandar Al-Rowdah marina near Muscat.
It also poses a threat to the country’s fisheries. An outbreak of a different kind of algae in 2008 led to the beaching of 50 tons of oxygen-starved fish, which rotted up and down the coast, Al-Alawi said.
The researchers have found cause for both despair and hope by studying a live noctiluca culture in their lab: The blooms will likely spread as the Indian Ocean continues to absorb greenhouse gas emissions, but could be contained if they are sprayed with fresh water. Goes and Gomes hope to develop an early-warning system for Oman modeled on one operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Florida
But Saleh Al-Mashari, who learned to sail and fish as a boy in the small coastal village where he still lives, and who now captains a researcher vessel, said the damage is already done.
“The fish are migrating,” he said. “They can’t get enough air here.”
Growing algae bloom in Arabian Sea tied to climate change
Growing algae bloom in Arabian Sea tied to climate change
Israel attacks Rafah after Hamas claims responsibility for deadly rocket attack
- Hamas claims attack on Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza that Israel says killed three soldiers
- Sunday's attack on the crossing came as hopes dimmed for ceasefire talks underway in Cairo
CAIRO: Three Israeli soldiers were killed in a rocket attack claimed by Hamas armed wing, near the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, where Palestinian health officials said at least 19 people were killed by Israeli fire on Sunday.
Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility on Sunday for an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza that Israel said killed three of its soldiers.
Israel's military said 10 projectiles were launched from Rafah in southern Gaza towards the area of the crossing, which it said was now closed to aid trucks going into the coastal enclave. Other crossings remained open.
Hamas' armed wing said it fired rockets at an Israeli army base by the crossing, but did not confirm where it fired them from. Hamas media quoted a source close to the group as saying the commercial crossing was not the target.
More than a million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.
Shortly after the Hamas attack, an Israeli airstrike hit a house in Rafah killing three people and wounding several others, Palestinian medics said.
The Israeli military confirmed the counter-strike, saying it struck the launcher from which the Hamas projectiles were fired, as well as a nearby "military structure".
"The launches carried out by Hamas adjacent to the Rafah Crossing ... are a clear example of the terrorist organisation's systematic exploitation of humanitarian facilities and spaces, and their continued use of the Gazan civilian population as human shields," it said.
Hamas denies it uses civilians as human shields.
Just before midnight, an Israeli air strike killed nine Palestinians, including a baby, in another house in Rafah, Gaza health officials said. They said the new strike increased the death toll on Sunday to at least 19 people.
Israel has vowed to enter the southern Gaza city and flush out Hamas forces there, but has faced mounting pressure to hold fire as the operation could derail fragile humanitarian efforts in Gaza and endanger many more lives.
Sunday's attack on the crossing came as hopes dimmed for ceasefire talks under way in Cairo.
The war began after Hamas stunned Israel with a cross-border raid on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 252 hostages taken, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed, 29 of them in the past 24 hours, and more than 77,000 have been wounded in Israel's assault, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Israel attacks Rafah after Hamas claims responsibility for deadly rocket attack
- Israel has killed more than 34,600 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
CAIRO: Three Israeli soldiers were killed in a rocket attack claimed by Hamas armed wing, near the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, where Palestinian health officials said at least 19 people were killed by Israeli fire on Sunday.
Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility on Sunday for an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza that Israel said killed three of its soldiers.
Israel's military said 10 projectiles were launched from Rafah in southern Gaza towards the area of the crossing, which it said was now closed to aid trucks going into the coastal enclave. Other crossings remained open.
Hamas' armed wing said it fired rockets at an Israeli army base by the crossing, but did not confirm where it fired them from. Hamas media quoted a source close to the group as saying the commercial crossing was not the target.
More than a million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.
Shortly after the Hamas attack, an Israeli airstrike hit a house in Rafah killing three people and wounding several others, Palestinian medics said.
The Israeli military confirmed the counter-strike, saying it struck the launcher from which the Hamas projectiles were fired, as well as a nearby "military structure".
"The launches carried out by Hamas adjacent to the Rafah Crossing ... are a clear example of the terrorist organisation's systematic exploitation of humanitarian facilities and spaces, and their continued use of the Gazan civilian population as human shields," it said.
Hamas denies it uses civilians as human shields.
Just before midnight, an Israeli air strike killed nine Palestinians, including a baby, in another house in Rafah, Gaza health officials said. They said the new strike increased the death toll on Sunday to at least 19 people.
Israel has vowed to enter the southern Gaza city and flush out Hamas forces there, but has faced mounting pressure to hold fire as the operation could derail fragile humanitarian efforts in Gaza and endanger many more lives.
Sunday's attack on the crossing came as hopes dimmed for ceasefire talks under way in Cairo.
The war began after Hamas stunned Israel with a cross-border raid on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 252 hostages taken, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed, 29 of them in the past 24 hours, and more than 77,000 have been wounded in Israel's assault, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Netanyahu uses Holocaust ceremony to brush off international pressure against Gaza offensive
- The ceremony ushered in Israel’s first Holocaust remembrance day since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war, imbuing the already somber day with additional meaning
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected international pressure to halt the war in Gaza in a fiery speech marking the country’s annual Holocaust memorial day, declaring: “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.”
The message, delivered in a setting that typically avoids politics, was aimed at the growing chorus of world leaders who have criticized the heavy toll caused by Israel’s military offensive against Hamas militants and have urged the sides to agree to a ceasefire.
Netanyahu has said he is open to a deal that would pause nearly seven months of fighting and bring home hostages held by Hamas. But he also says he remains committed to an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite widespread international opposition because of the more than 1 million civilians huddled there.
“I say to the leaders of the world: No amount of pressure, no decision by any international forum will stop Israel from defending itself,” he said, speaking in English. “Never again is now.”
Yom Hashoah, the day Israel observes as a memorial for the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany and its allies in the Holocaust, is one of the most solemn dates on the country’s calendar. Speeches at the ceremony generally avoid politics, though Netanyahu in recent years has used the occasion to lash out at Israel’s archenemy Iran.
The ceremony ushered in Israel’s first Holocaust remembrance day since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war, imbuing the already somber day with additional meaning.
Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people in the attack, making it the deadliest violence against Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded with an air and ground offensive in Gaza, where the death toll has soared to more than 34,500 people, according to local health officials, and about 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are displaced. The death and destruction has prompted South Africa to file a genocide case against Israel in the UN’s world court. Israel strongly rejects the charges.
On Sunday, Netanyahu attacked those accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinians, claiming that Israel was doing everything possible to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
The 24-hour memorial period began after sundown on Sunday with a ceremony at Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, in Jerusalem.
There are approximately 245,000 living Holocaust survivors around the world, according to the Claims Conference, an organization that negotiates for material compensation for Holocaust survivors. Approximately half of the survivors live in Israel.
On Sunday, Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation League released an annual Antisemitism Worldwide Report for 2023, which found a sharp increase in antisemitic attacks globally.
It said the number of antisemitic incidents in the United States doubled, from 3,697 in 2022 to 7,523 in 2023.
While most of these incidents occurred after the war erupted in October, the number of antisemitic incidents, which include vandalism, harassment, assault, and bomb threats, from January to September was already significantly higher than the previous year.
The report found an average of three bomb threats per day at synagogues and Jewish institutions in the US, more than 10 times the number in 2022.
Other countries tracked similar rises in antisemitic incidents. In France, the number nearly quadrupled, from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023, while it more than doubled in the United Kingdom and Canada.
“In the aftermath of the October 7 war crimes committed by Hamas, the world has seen the worst wave of antisemitic incidents since the end of the Second World War,” the report stated.
Netanyahu also compared the recent wave of protests on American campuses to German universities in the 1930s, in the runup to the Holocaust. He condemned the “explosion of a volcano of antisemitism spitting out boiling lava of lies against us around the world.”
Nearly 2,500 students have been arrested in a wave of protests at US college campuses, while there have been smaller protests in other countries, including France. Protesters reject antisemitism accusations and say they are criticizing Israel. Campuses and the federal government are struggling to define exactly where political speech crosses into antisemitism.
Hezbollah fires rockets at Israel after south Lebanon strike kills 4 members of family
- Shells fall on Kiryat Shmona and reach northern Golan
- Maronite Patriarch Bechara Al-Rahi calls for end to war in southern Lebanon
BEIRUT: An Israeli airstrike killed four members of a family in a border village in southern Lebanon on Sunday, security sources said.
Hezbollah, in retaliation, fired Katyusha rockets at the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, close to the Lebanese border.
The four family members killed in Mays Al-Jabal were identified as Fadi Hounaikah and Maya Ali Ammar, and their sons Mohammed, 21, and Ahmad, 12.
The attack occurred when the family took advantage of a de-escalation of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel to return to their properties to assess damage and move goods from their supermarket to a location outside the village.
A security source in the area told Arab News that while the family was gathering their groceries from the supermarket, an Israeli military drone spotted them and launched an attack, destroying the area and killing all the members of the family and injuring several civilians in the vicinity.
The source clarified that villages in the area were empty because “residents fled the area seven months ago.”
He added: “When residents want to enter these villages to attend victims’ funerals, they send their names and car number plates to the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL, who in turn coordinate with the Israeli side to spare these funerals (from attack).
“In general, people cannot enter border villages without taking into consideration the Israeli danger, as Israeli reconnaissance planes and drones are hovering over the area 24/7. However, what Israel committed against this family is a terrible massacre.”
Hezbollah responded to the incident by launching dozens of Katyusha and Falaq missiles at Israel. The group said the operation was “in response to the crime committed by Israel in the Mays Al-Jabal village.”
The Israeli Upper Galilee Regional Council announced that missiles hit buildings in Kiryat Shmona, while Israeli Army Radio reported that some of the rockets fell inside the city, causing a power outage.
An Israeli army spokesman reported that 65 rockets were launched from southern Lebanon toward Israeli settlements in the Upper Galilee region.
Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes hit the villages of Al-Adissa and Kafr Kila, while artillery shelling hit the village of Aitaroun.
Maronite Patriarch Bechara Al-Rahi in his Sunday sermon called for an end to the war in southern Lebanon, urging an end to the “demolition of homes, the destruction of shops, the burning of the land and its crops, and the killing and displacement of innocent civilians and the destruction of their livelihood in an economic condition that has already impoverished them.”
Mohammed Raad, leader of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, meanwhile, expressed his disapproval of the West’s backing for Israel.
He said that Israel “faces no international deterrent. On the contrary, some support it in committing crimes.”
He accused those who support Israel of being “hypocrites and liars who falsely claim to champion human rights, civilization, and progress in the West, (yet) they provide Israel with financial aid, weapons, smart bombs, and a continuous air bridge.”
Raad concluded: “We are not afraid of Israel’s insanity. We are prepared to confront them directly. We are prepared to sacrifice and shed blood to protect our homeland, independence, and honor.”
UNRWA chief says again barred entry to Gaza by Israel
- “Just this week, they have denied — for the second time — my entry to Gaza where I planned to be with our UNRWA colleagues including those on the front lines”: Lazzarini
JERUSALEM: The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said Sunday that Israeli authorities had barred him from entering Gaza for a second time since the Israel-Hamas war started on October 7.
“Just this week, they have denied — for the second time — my entry to Gaza where I planned to be with our UNRWA colleagues including those on the front lines,” Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Lazzarini has been to Gaza four times since the war broke out including on March 17.
“The Israeli authorities continue to deny humanitarian access to the United Nations,” he said on Sunday.
“Only in the past two weeks, we have recorded 10 incidents involving shooting at convoys, arrests of UN staff including bullying, stripping them naked, threats with arms & long delays at checkpoints forcing convoys to move during the dark or abort,” Lazzarini said.
He also called for an “independent investigation” into rocket fire that led to the closure of a key Israel-Gaza aid crossing.
Hamas’s armed wing, Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the Sunday launch, saying militants had targeted Israeli troops in the area of Kerem Shalom crossing.
