The countless reefs off the Red Sea coast are both a blessing and a curse for the local inhabitants. An excellent habitat for several species of harvestable fish makes the waters highly productive for fishermen, but for the unwary or the unlucky, out too late or caught in bad weather, working the reefs can be a death sentence.

Local lore is full of stories about dolphins guiding boats to safety through the often treacherous waters. Along the southern stretch of the Red Sea coast, the name for a dolphin is Abu Salama, the ‘father of safety’.

“Samadai is a tiny reef, but it became much more than that,” explains Giuseppe Notarbartolo of the Abu Salama Society. “It has become more, a kind of symbol of what we can accomplish.”

Samadai is an offshore reef about five kilometers southeast of Marsa Alam. The semi-circular reef forms a shallow lagoon protected from the weather that has become known as Dolphin House.

The majority of the local dolphins are Spinner Dolphins, so called because of their incredible acrobatic skills and their peculiar habit of leaping out of the water and spinning in mid-air before landing. The Spinner itself is not a rare or unusual animal, but those of Samadai are different. Although the numbers fluctuate seasonally, the dolphins here permanently inhabit Dolphin House. The phenomenon is only known to occur in one other place in the world, on a similar reef in Hawaii. A number of Egyptian and foreign scientists are now campaigning to redesignate them as a subspecies called Reef Dolphins.

The Spinner Dolphins feed at night when their preferred food, squid and shrimp, come close to the surface. During the day, the dolphins need to rest; Samadai, protected from the weather and large predators who generally don’t come in such shallow water, is tailor-made.

Kim Piper Al-Rashidi promised action at an Abu Salama society workshop.

The permanent dolphin population has created a boom in the tourist industry around Marsa Alam. Boat owners and dive operators can all but guarantee their guests will at least see the dolphins, if not get to swim with them. As word got out in the past decade, huge resorts started mushrooming around Marsa Alam. The number of tourists has skyrocketed, as has the numbers of boats and guides who came to accommodate them.

But then the unthinkable started to happen: The dolphins began deserting Samadai.

Hesham Tomoum, project manager for the Abu Salama Society, is studying the effects of human interaction with the dolphins of Samadai and explains some of the dangers: “A couple of years ago, there was a boat fire inside the reef. The dolphins left the bay for 16 days. This had never happened before; as far as we know, it was the only time Samadai has been completely deserted.”

By 2003, it had become clear that the current level of interaction was no longer sustainable, forcing stakeholders including hoteliers, boat owners and dive operators to get together and ask for outside help. The result was the formation of the Abu Salama Society.

Ayman Afifi, the manager of the Red Sea Protectorate for the Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs, is very happy with the group’s progress so far and would like to see it extended.

“This is an excellent example of community involvement on resource management, without which the dolphins would have probably left Samadai more than a year ago,” he says.

Financing for the project comes from the Egyptian and Italian governments under the Debt for Development Swap Program. Besides supporting and expanding existing research, backers have been trying to raise awareness among both core stakeholders and policy makers at the municipal and governorate levels. The stakeholders were an easy sell: They long supported the idea of courses and workshops for themselves as well as professional education for park rangers. Government officials were a little harder, Tomoum says. “The problem is that the policy makers, government officials, are not marine biologists. It’s our job to educate them.”

To emphasize his point, he relates events that took place five years ago when he was working with HEPCA (the Hurgada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association).

“We were trying to get bills passed to protect the sharks in the Red Sea,” he begins. When he first met with officials, they asked, “Is this the thanks we get for killing the sharks which attack divers?” They were finally persuaded, however: “They just passed a law to protect the sharks, and as far as I know, it’s the same people [in key positions] as five years ago,” he adds.

That’s not to say that the government and the environmentalists are always at odds, Tomoum is quick to point out. “We have a very good relationship and have had a lot of cooperation right up to the governor,” he says. “We maintain a very open dialog and can reach the governor when we need to, much more so, I think, than in any other governorate.”

The society started work in October 2005 on an ambitious project to completely restructure access to the Samadai reef. The area inside the reef that is sheltered from the weather is now divided into three clearly marked areas. Zone A, representing almost half of the protected waters, is designated off-limits to all but park rangers. Outside of this ‘dolphins-only’ area is Zone B, which is limited to snorkelers accompanied by certified guides. Zone C, which covers the mouth of the bay, is where small craft such as Zodiacs can drop off snorkelers who are going inside or divers who wish to stay here, but all large vessels are required to stay moored well outside these areas.

Limiting access was only part of the solution. Visitors’ behavior needed to be “modified” (as the activists put it) as well, with new regulations barring many types of contact between divers and dolphins and divers and fragile corals.

The society is also creating a photo ID bank through which to identify individual dolphins. “Tagging the dolphins with transmitters is very hard on them,” Notarbartolo explains. “They are very sensitive and they can even die from the process.” So far, they have positively identified 50 different animals and are expanding the process to nearby areas.

Not all of the new regulations were universally popular, but a recent survey of stakeholders found most are largely in favor, even if they would like to see a few amendments. The society’s clout is largely limited to collecting data (including feedback from the stakeholders), on which it bases recommendations to policy makers. “It’s not always easy,” Notarbartolo says. “You can’t make everyone happy. We have the dolphins, the tourists and the tour operators and sometimes they have competing interests.”

To reconcile their differences and keep the dialog going, the Abu Salama Society hosted a stakeholder workshop and, as if to underscore Tomoum’s point about government cooperation, Red Sea Governor, General Bakr Al-Rashidi, attended himself instead of sending a designated spokesman.

Al-Rashidi praised the project and pointed out how areas like Samadai were important to the governorate. (The Red Sea governorate accounts for 20 percent of Egypt’s yearly visitors.)

After speaking, the governor opened the floor to questions and comments — and promised on the spot to act on some suggestions he received. One dive operator claimed there was evidence illegal fishing was hurting the Dugong population just a short distance to the north.

“This is a case of needing stricter enforcement of already existing laws,” Al-Rashidi responded, then promised to issue an immediate decree (which is binding as law) to crack down on the activity.

Samadai’s stakeholders raise LE 2.5 million each year for conservation efforts in the area. The governor was told that only a fraction of this money (which is handed over to the local government for distribution) was making it to its destination. Again, Al-Rashidi has promised not ‘study’ (as many local officials would), but immediate action.

Taking stock at the halfway point of their project’s current funding cycle, Abu Salama’s members say they’ve already surpassed their expectations. Along with all of the invaluable data collected, they say the most significant indicator of success is the population of the dolphins which has risen steadily.

One of the biggest challenges the society now faces is continuing its work: In six months, the non-profit organization will lose its original funding. With more time, the Abu Salama Society could turn its compiled data into concrete conclusions that would benefit not only the unique dolphins, but those who come to visit them and the people who make their living helping them to visit.

Whether the society will be able to continue its work remains an open question.  et