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The Gulf of Gabès: A Nation Confronts Its Environmental Legacy

Satellite image of the Gulf of Gabès, Tunisia, taken from the International Space Station showing the shallow turquoise waters, sediment plumes, the Kerkennah Islands, and the contrast between the gulf and the deep blue Mediterranean Sea.
The Gulf of Gabès as seen from the International Space Station. The gulf’s distinctive shallow waters and sediment patterns are visible from orbit, with the Kerkennah Islands at left. This unique ecosystem has faced decades of industrial discharge. Photo: NASA Johnson, August 2, 2024.

The Gulf of Gabès was once called a maritime oasis. This stretch of Tunisia’s southeastern coast, where shallow turquoise waters meet North Africa’s largest remaining date palm groves, supported fishing communities for millennia. Posidonia seagrass meadows carpeted the seafloor, sheltering juvenile fish and sequestering carbon. The ecosystem’s productivity made it legendary among Mediterranean fishers.

For the past fifty years, that ecosystem has absorbed the byproducts of Tunisia’s phosphate industry. The cumulative toll has been immense. But 2025 marked a turning point: the year when citizens drew a line, when protests paralyzed the city, and when the highest levels of government finally responded with language that validated what activists had long claimed.

The Gulf of Gabès is becoming a test case for environmental accountability in the Mediterranean.

The Weight of Decades

Tunisia sits atop some of the world’s largest phosphate deposits. Mining operations in the interior, centered around Gafsa, extract raw phosphate rock that is then transported to coastal facilities for processing into phosphoric acid and fertilizers. The Tunisian Chemical Group, a state-owned enterprise, operates the primary processing complex in Gabès.

The industrial process generates phosphogypsum as a byproduct: a slite slurry containing trace radioactive elements, heavy metals, and high acidity. For decades, this material has been discharged directly into the sea. The discharge created what marine scientists describe as a dead zone extending several kilometers offshore. Posidonia meadows that once defined the Gulf’s ecology have been decimated across vast areas. Toxins have accumulated in the food web, working their way through fish populations and into the communities that depend on them.

For residents of Gabès, the pollution has never been abstract. Air quality in neighborhoods near the industrial complex is chronically poor. The smell of chemical processing permeates daily life. Health concerns have mounted over years, though comprehensive epidemiological data has historically been difficult to obtain.

Workers affiliated with Tunisia's UGTT labor union protest industrial pollution in Gabès at night, holding a Stop Pollution banner featuring a gas mask symbol and the red UGTT flag with its star and crescent emblem.
Workers with the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) protest against industrial pollution in Gabès. The “Stop Pollution” movement has mobilized residents demanding action on emissions from the state-owned chemical complex. Photo: UGTT.

The 2025 Crisis

Tensions that had simmered for years boiled over in the fall of 2025.

A summer of intense heatwaves exacerbated the dispersion of industrial fumes across residential areas. Then, in October, a series of severe gas leaks occurred at the facility. Ammonia and nitrous oxide releases sent dozens of residents to hospitals, including schoolchildren who suffered respiratory distress and symptoms of asphyxiation. Images of children receiving oxygen treatment circulated widely on social media.

The public response was immediate and unprecedented in scale. A coalition of civil society groups, supported by the Tunisian General Labor Union, declared a general strike on October 21, 2025. The city shut down. Thousands marched under banners reading “Gabès Wants to Live” (Gabès veut vivre), demanding not apologies but action: cessation of the pollution and relocation of the most dangerous industrial units away from residential areas and the coast.

The protests marked a shift in how environmental grievances were articulated. Previous demonstrations had often focused on economic concerns, framing pollution as a price communities paid for jobs. The 2025 movement reframed the issue in existential terms. Signs spoke of health and survival, not trade-offs. The social license that had allowed industrial operations to continue despite known harms had, in the view of many residents, finally expired.

Presidential Response

On January 14, 2026, President Kais Saied convened a meeting with a specially appointed task force comprising petrochemical engineers, medical experts, and former directors of the chemical group. The session produced language that surprised observers accustomed to governmental caution on industrial policy.

President Saied described the situation in Gabès as an “environmental assassination.” The term, stark and unequivocal, aligned the state’s official position with claims that activists had made for years. It acknowledged that what had occurred was not merely unfortunate but constituted a fundamental violation of citizens’ rights to health and a livable environment.

The task force presented recommendations spanning immediate repairs and longer-term structural changes. Emergency funds were mobilized to repair leaking valves and failing filtration systems that had caused the October gas releases. The government committed to the long-delayed project of relocating pollutant-heavy units away from residential neighborhoods and the coastline. A review of management practices that allowed the facility to deteriorate was initiated.

Whether these commitments translate into sustained action remains to be seen. Phosphate is a major export, and the economic interests supporting continued production are substantial. But the January 2026 intervention represents a rhetorical and political shift: the state has named the problem in terms that make continued inaction harder to justify.

Restoration Beneath the Surface

While political battles unfold onshore, conservation efforts continue underwater.

The degradation caused by industrial discharge has been compounded by “ghost gear”: fishing nets lost or abandoned over decades of intensive fishing activity. These nets, manufactured from synthetic nylon, persist in the marine environment for generations. They continue catching fish, turtles, and dolphins long after fishers have forgotten them, a phenomenon scientists call ghost fishing. Draped across damaged seabeds and snagged on remnant Posidonia formations, they represent both ecological harm and physical obstacles to recovery.

International and local partnerships intensified removal operations throughout 2025. The Strong Sea LIFE project and the GhostNets initiative coordinated diving teams to manually locate, cut, and retrieve abandoned gear from the seafloor. In one operation spanning waters off Monastir and the deeper Gulf, teams removed nearly three tons of ghost nets, clearing over 52,000 square meters of seabed.

The work is painstaking. Divers must assess each net’s entanglement with bottom structures before cutting, avoiding further damage to whatever marine life or habitat remains. Priority goes to areas where nets have snagged on surviving Posidonia, since the seagrass represents the ecosystem’s best hope for natural regeneration if given the chance to recover.

Retrieved nets have found unexpected second lives. The Association for the Protection of the Environment of Kelibia launched “Nets of Hope,” a project that processes salvaged gear into recycled materials for consumer products. The circular economy dimension adds value to cleanup operations, transforming liability into resource.

New Pressures, New Questions

The Gulf’s future involves more than resolving its industrial past. New development projects introduce additional variables into an already stressed system.

North of Gabès, the Hicha II project represents a different kind of coastal industrialization. Developed by a Dutch agricultural company, the project involves construction of fifty hectares of high-tech glass greenhouses for tomato production aimed at export markets. The facility will operate its own desalination plant, drawing seawater through a 3.5-kilometer intake pipe and discharging concentrated brine through a 2.5-kilometer outfall.

Desalination brine is not toxic in the conventional sense, but its elevated salinity can create localized conditions that stress marine organisms adapted to normal seawater. In a gulf already characterized by high temperatures and compromised ecosystems, the cumulative effect of additional stressors requires careful monitoring. The project illustrates tensions that coastal communities increasingly face: economic development promising jobs and foreign investment arrives alongside environmental loads that compound existing damage.

How Tunisia navigates these competing pressures will shape not just the Gulf of Gabès but serve as precedent for coastal development decisions across the region.

The Long Horizon

Environmental restoration operates on timescales that can seem impossibly distant from political cycles. One Tunisian expert cited in regional media suggested that full ecosystem recovery in the Gulf might require 150 years, assuming pollution sources are controlled and active restoration efforts continue. Such projections humble anyone hoping for quick redemption.

Yet the alternative to long-term commitment is abandonment, and Gabès is not a place that can be abandoned. Hundreds of thousands of people live along these shores. Fishing communities trace their presence back centuries. The phosphate industry, for all its environmental costs, employs thousands and generates revenue the national economy depends upon. The challenge is not choosing between industry and environment but transforming both.

The ghost net divers surfacing with loads of tangled nylon, the protesters who shut down their city to demand breathable air, the president who named what had occurred as assassination rather than accident: each represents a different kind of intervention in a story that will unfold across generations. The Gulf of Gabès is damaged profoundly. It is also, perhaps for the first time, receiving the attention and resources that recovery requires.

Whether that proves sufficient remains the open question. The Mediterranean has witnessed civilizations rise and fall along its shores, ecosystems transformed by human activity across millennia. The Gulf of Gabès adds another chapter to that long history: a place where the costs of industrialization became impossible to ignore, and where a nation began the slow, uncertain work of making amends.

Written by: Junior Thanong Aiamkhophueng

Attribution: This article draws on reporting from People’s Dispatch and Middle East Report on the 2025 Gabès environmental crisis; Inkyfada investigative coverage of the Groupe Chimique Tunisien; allAfrica reporting on the January 2026 presidential task force; technical documentation from SPA/RAC and the Strong Sea LIFE project on ghost gear removal and marine restoration; and regional analysis from Noria Research. UGTT protest photo via People’s Dispatch; Gulf of Gabès satellite image by NASA Johnson via Wikimedia Commons. For further reading, visit Inkyfada, MERIP, and France 24.

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Issue 132 - May 2026

SeaKeepers Welcomes Dr. Mark Luther as First Scientist Chairman, Marking a New Era for Ocean Research

The International SeaKeepers Society marks a historic milestone, appointing Dr. Mark Luther of the University of South Florida as its first scientist Chairman, succeeding Jay Wade and signaling a deeper scientific chapter for the yachting-led conservation organization.
Jay Wade and Dr. Mark Luther of The International SeaKeepers Society
Outgoing Chairman Jay Wade with incoming Scientist Chairman Dr. Mark Luther. Photo: SeaKeepers.

April 10, 2026. The Board of Directors of The International SeaKeepers Society has announced a leadership transition, extending its deepest gratitude to outgoing Chairman Jay Wade and welcoming Dr. Mark Luther as the organization’s first scientist Chairman, a historic milestone for the ocean conservation NGO.

During his tenure, Jay Wade provided steady, thoughtful leadership, guiding the organization through a period of growth while remaining anchored in SeaKeepers’ mission to advance oceanographic research, conservation, and marine education. A passionate advocate for the yachting and boating community, Wade championed a vision of transforming private vessels into platforms for scientific discovery, expanding the organization’s global reach and strengthening its role as a bridge between ocean science and the maritime industry.

A first scientist Chairman for SeaKeepers

Dr. Mark Luther brings decades of expertise in physical oceanography and maritime systems, alongside a lifelong connection to the water. He earned his Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and currently serves as Professor and Director of the Center for Maritime and Port Studies at the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science.

With over 30 years of experience supporting oceanographic observation systems, including longstanding work with NOAA’s Tampa Bay Physical Oceanographic Real-Time System, Dr. Luther has been at the forefront of integrating science with real-world maritime operations. His leadership extends across key regional and federal committees, where he collaborates closely with the U.S. Coast Guard, port authorities, and maritime stakeholders to address environmental challenges tied to marine transportation.

A dedicated member of the SeaKeepers community, Dr. Luther has served as Chair of the organization’s Scientific Advisory Council, helping to guide and elevate its scientific initiatives. He is also an avid boater and U.S. Coast Guard-licensed captain, having spent more than four decades navigating the waters of Tampa Bay and Florida’s west coast.

“With years of dedicated service to SeaKeepers, Mark brings a deep understanding of our mission to this role. It is exciting to see him step into the position of Chairman and help guide the organization forward.”

Jay Wade, outgoing Chairman, The International SeaKeepers Society

Dr. Luther’s appointment signals an exciting new chapter for SeaKeepers, one that deepens the organization’s scientific leadership while continuing to engage the global fleet in meaningful ocean research, education, and conservation.

About The International SeaKeepers Society. The International SeaKeepers Society works with the yachting community to take part in research, conservation, and educational efforts that advance the health of the ocean. Learn more at seakeepers.org or @seakeepers on social.

Adapted from a press release issued by The International SeaKeepers Society on April 10, 2026.

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Issue 132 - May 2026

Falmouth Harbour Trials the World’s First All-Concrete Pontoon Float to Replace EPS in Marinas

Falmouth Harbour is trialling the world’s first all-concrete marina pontoon, designed by Cornwall-based ScaffFloat, as a recyclable alternative to Expanded Polystyrene floats and a step toward cutting marine microplastic pollution.

Falmouth, Cornwall, UK. Falmouth Harbour is trialling the world’s first all-concrete marina pontoon float, designed and built by the team at ScaffFloat in neighbouring Penryn, in a first step to removing all Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) floats from its leisure and commercial operations.

The Harbour has pledged to move away from EPS products in the light of mounting evidence that polystyrene microplastics in the world’s oceans inflict serious damage on the marine environment and life within it. Polystyrene, globally used for its lightness and buoyancy, is made from fossil fuels, is virtually un-decomposable, and when it breaks down into microplastics can be ingested by marine life with devastating consequences.

“The amount of broken-up polystyrene around our creeks and rivers, particularly after this year’s storms, is awful to see and very hard to clean up without damaging the delicate ecology of our shorelines. Expanded Polystyrene fragments in the marine environment pose a serious ecological concern, as seabirds, fish, turtles and other fauna mistake EPS beads for food, which can cause internal injuries or death; entering the food chain poses health risks to humans as well.”

Vicki Spooner, Environment Manager, Falmouth Harbour

Inside the Reef Float: an inert, recyclable alternative to EPS

Penryn marine company ScaffFloat Ltd has tackled the challenge of finding alternatives to traditional pontoons by inventing the “Reef Float.” Their first commercial prototype, made entirely from concrete, has been undergoing trials beneath a Falmouth Harbour pontoon. ScaffFloat developed the new product as part of a business development project that received £284,787 from the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund as part of Cornwall’s Good Growth Programme.

The Reef Float’s buoyant core is made using ultra-low-density waterproof concrete, instead of EPS foam, and the core is then cast inside a high-strength engineered concrete skin. In the highly unlikely event that a Reef Float ever failed, the materials would simply sit inertly as stone in the marine environment, whereas a cracked-open EPS float exposes its polystyrene foam core to the marine elements.

“We replaced a failing EPS pontoon float at Falmouth Harbour with a Reef Float, where it survived all that this January’s storms could throw at it. It’s what we would expect, of course, as we’ve designed it to be strong with an ultra-long life. But it’s also completely inert in the marine environment and 100 percent recyclable, so a game-changing alternative to the EPS floats currently used all over the world.”

Toby Budd, Founder and Managing Director, ScaffFloat

Local innovation, global stage

Local MP Jayne Kirkham, checking out the new Reef Float in Falmouth, called it “exactly the kind of innovation we want to see in Cornwall: local businesses developing practical but cutting-edge solutions to global environmental challenges. Cutting polystyrene pollution from our waters while creating skilled jobs is a win for our marine environment and our economy. I’m proud to see government funding helping projects like this lead the way.”

“Falmouth Harbour has made the conscious decision to move away from EPS foam pontoons in all our operations, and it’s fantastic that our neighbours at ScaffFloat are the first company to offer a plastic-free alternative. Reef Floats are easily installed, in situ, on a rolling basis, as and when we need to replace old EPS floats, and they have a zero-cost, 100 percent recyclable end-of-life disposal. It’s another tremendous example of Cornish ingenuity, and we look forward to working with them into the future.”

Miles Carden, CEO, Falmouth Harbour

The Reef Float team has been shortlisted for the Innovation Award at Marina26 in Australia this May, with an invitation to attend and present at the biggest marina conference in the world, demonstrating what a major issue EPS has become for the marina industry and legislative authorities alike.

Australia itself lost more than 1,000 pontoons in the 2022 Queensland floods, where they broke up and created an environmental disaster known as the “White Spill,” with the ocean and beaches covered with EPS balls that were almost impossible to clear up.

Learn more. For more information on Reef Float and parent company ScaffFloat, visit scafffloat.co.uk/reeffloat. For more on Falmouth Harbour, including its wide-ranging environmental initiatives, see falmouthharbour.co.uk.

Adapted from a press release issued by Louise Midgley Communications, on behalf of ScaffFloat and Falmouth Harbour.

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Conservation Photography

Little Cayman Hope Spot Shows Early Signs of Reef Recovery After the World’s Most Extreme Coral Bleaching Event

CCMI’s 2025 Healthy Reefs Report Card shows Little Cayman’s coral cover edging back to 13.4 percent, an early but unmistakable sign that the island’s reefs are beginning to recover from the world’s most extreme coral bleaching event.

Little Cayman, Cayman Islands. Marking Earth Day 2026, the Central Caribbean Marine Institute (CCMI) released its 2025 Healthy Reefs Report Card, revealing early signs of recovery and renewed hope for Little Cayman’s reefs after the most extreme coral bleaching event on record in 2023.

The summer of 2023 was the hottest ever measured, and it brought with it one of the most extensive global coral bleaching events in modern history, decimating reefs from the Caribbean to the Indo-Pacific and casting their future in doubt. CCMI’s Healthy Reefs campaign has tracked Little Cayman’s reefs since 1998, and the 2024 surveys delivered the bleakest numbers in the program’s history: coral cover had collapsed to 9.8 percent, down from 26 percent before the marine heatwave.

This year’s data tells a different story. The 2025 surveys, summarized in the new Report Card, show coral cover edging back up to 13.4 percent. The shift is not yet statistically significant, but the direction is unmistakable: recovery in Little Cayman has begun.

A site-by-site picture

Zoom in from the island-wide average and the recovery looks more layered. Twenty percent of surveyed sites posted a significant increase in coral cover between 2024 and 2025. One site, Coral City, held the line entirely through the bleaching, exhibiting no significant loss. In total, 30 percent of sites have either maintained pre-bleaching coral levels or demonstrated significant recovery this year. The remaining 70 percent show either minor, non-significant recovery or no recovery at all.

Reef recovery is rarely visible on a 12 to 24 month horizon. Corals are slow-growing animals, and even after a disturbance ends, biologists typically expect at least three years before measurable rebound, and a minimum of seven years (sometimes nearly thirty) for a reef to return to pre-bleaching baselines. Against that timeline, what CCMI is recording in 2025 is striking: the resilience built into Little Cayman, with strong protections and minimal local disturbance, appears to be doing exactly what reef science predicts it should do.

Fish populations holding the line

While coral cover is still climbing back, fish populations have continued to thrive. CCMI has documented consistent increases in fish density since 2016, with a dramatic jump in density and biomass in 2024 that held through 2025. That matters more than it might sound: herbivorous fish keep macro-algae in check, and when algae is left unchecked it can smother corals and block new recruits from settling. A healthy reef-fish community is, in many ways, what makes coral recovery possible at all.

A Hope Spot earning its name

Little Cayman is a Mission Blue Hope Spot, a designation that frames the island as a small-but-mighty example of what marine protection can look like when conservation is prioritized. Under the pressures the ocean is now under, that framing reads less like marketing copy and more like a working hypothesis the reef is steadily proving out.

The island has form here. Little Cayman’s Nassau grouper spawning aggregation rebounded from roughly 1,000 individuals to nearly 9,000 over a decade, one of the most cited recovery stories in the Caribbean. The early coral signal in the 2025 Report Card could become another chapter in that record.

The nursery, and three resilient genotypes

CCMI’s coral nursery was hit hard during the 2023 bleaching, losing close to 90 percent of its stock. Genetic work in the aftermath identified three staghorn coral genotypes that survived nearly 20 degree-heating weeks. Since 2023, those three genotypes have rebuilt the nursery from just 17 fragments to nearly 300 as of March 2026. CCMI’s nursery likely represents one of the last remaining populations of the critically endangered staghorn coral, Acropora cervicornis, in Little Cayman.

Why this matters beyond Little Cayman

Hope Spots like Little Cayman do not just protect their own waters. They function as larval source populations, exporting recruits along ocean currents to less resilient reefs downstream. In a warming ocean where many sites have lost their capacity to bounce back unaided, these pockets of resilience are increasingly the difference between regional collapse and regional recovery.

The 2025 numbers do not erase what 2023 took. Coral cover is still well below pre-heatwave levels, and the recovery is partial, uneven, and fragile. But for the first time since the bleaching, the trendline is pointing in the right direction. As CCMI puts it, research and science-based actions are critical right now to understand the ecological processes driving this resilience and to translate that understanding into management and protection.

Acknowledgments

CCMI thanks this year’s Healthy Reefs sponsors: Wheaton Precious Metals International, Foster’s Supermarket, Cayman Water, and Ugland Properties; and the Restoration program sponsors who made the work possible: The Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust, Artex Cayman Islands, Walkers, and Marfire.

Read the full 2025 Healthy Reefs Report Card at tinyurl.com/CCMI-25HRR and learn more about the Healthy Reefs campaign at reefresearch.org/our-work/research/healthy-reefs/.

Adapted from a press release issued by the Central Caribbean Marine Institute (CCMI), April 22, 2026. Photo credit: CCMI.

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