A resort town in Brazil hopes a steel-and-plastic net will stop piranhas from taking a bite out of bathers -- and its tourism industry.
Authorities in Palmas in central Brazil say 180 cases of bathers at the resort being bitten by piranhas have been reported so far this year at La Prata beach on an artificial lake that is a major tourist draw.
The figure is three times more than in all of last year.
Town development chief Milton Neres blamed the surge in bites on a booming piranha population as the fish increasingly use the reservoir as a breeding ground.
"They weren't attacks by groups of piranhas but of a single one biting someone's foot. Still, the number of cases is increasing and we live off tourism," Neres said on Monday by telephone.
Neres said the town is installing a US$11,300 net to protect bathers on the artificial lake, which is formed with water from the Tocantins river.
The net, fastened to more than 100 wooden posts forming a half-moon extending nearly 250m off La Prata beach, will be fully installed by this weekend, Neres said.
Authorities will then patrol the waters inside the swimming area. The will then catch and relocate any piranha they find.
He said the town expects 280,000 visitors in the July-August high season, but ruled out eradicating the piranhas.
"It's about combining protection for our swimmers while caring for the species," Neres said.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS