Since the opening of the Suez Canal, the renowned waterway connecting the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, its environmental impact has been a matter of concern, with the arrival of nonindigenous species from other regions.

Since the official inauguration 150 years ago, the number of species that have arrived through the canal — known as Lessepsian or Erythrean species — is estimated to exceed 400, according to different studies. This is a substantial migration that some observers warn is causing the most significant biogeographic change currently underway worldwide.

“Along the Levantine coast, you find in general more Lessepsian species than native,” Stelios Katsanevakis, professor of marine ecology at the University of the Aegean, told Al-Monitor. “This has caused a substantial change in the traffic [food] webs of the Eastern Mediterranean, and such kind of life chain change has not been observed anywhere else in the world.”

The species introduced through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean are unevenly distributed. Eastern Mediterranean countries such as Egypt, Israel and Turkey have documented the highest number of Lessepsian species, while in the western basin — where the Suez Canal is not the main pathway of introduction — the number is substantially lower.