The White Nile, from Lake Victoria in Uganda, and the Blue Nile, from Lake Tana in Ethiopia, merge in Sudan to form the Nile—the longest river in the world. Fifty-five hundred kilometers from its source, the Nile pours into the Mediterranean Sea along the coast of Egypt.
Figure 1. Fishing flourished for millennia just off the coast of Egypt, where the Nile poured nutrients into an otherwise unproductive part of the Mediterranean. In the summers, rains in Ethiopia produced floods in the Nile Valley from August through October. As its rampaging waters rushed toward the sea, the Nile picked up nutrients, much of which were deposited in the floodplain and the Nile Delta. The remainder entered the sea, creating an upsurge of phytoplankton that fed a valuable fishery. In 1964, when the Aswan High Dam closed and blocked the Nile's floodwaters, catches began a 15-year nosedive, as the dam deprived the sea of nutrients. Yet by 1980, the fishery had mysteriously started to recover. Like these ancient Egyptians (shown in Bas-relief, dating between 2323 and 2150 B.C.), today's fishers take large hauls—according to the author because of the human input of new nutrients from fertilizers for agriculture and from sewage outfalls.
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