Panoramic Batu Ferringhi beach, but…

…pinch your nose. The beach was so stinky today, complains one Penang resident who took an afternoon stroll today.

“It’s upsetting,” she adds.

“It was a hot afternoon and it was low tide. Not sure if it has anything to do with all that’s happening in Teluk Bahang today.”

“Water was visibly okay, the usual, but underneath the clear water were all the dead clams, fishes, crabs, starfishes… all lifeless and washed up by the tide to the shore. The crows were feasting on the beach.”

Here is some of the sludge elsewhere in Batu Ferringhi:

Stinky beach along the northwest of Penang Island – and swathes of red sea apparently spotted by a fisherman around the Batu Maung area in the southeast of the island yesterday morning.

What is causing this red sea in the southeast? Is it a red tide phenomenon (seen in Sabah), something to do with land reclamation or construction activity, illegal dumping or some other cause?

Update: 28 August noon:

And now dark waters are approaching Tanjung Bungah along the northern coast of the island:

It is a coastal and marine ecological disaster zone in the waters of Penang right now. Whatever the cause, you’ve got to feel sorry for the marine life, which is suffocating with low levels of dissolved oxygen, silt, sedimentation, ammonia and nitrate, the works. No wonder the fishermen are so upset.

And don’t forget the people of Penang who rely heavily on fish and other marine food, the price of which may climb as supplies grow scarce.

This comes at a time when the government is trying to boost food security by trying to reduce our reliance on food imports. But how to succeed when overdevelopment at all costs is posing such a huge threat to the ecological balance in Penang?

What will this do to the tourism sector in Penang?

Whither “Cleaner, Greener, Safer and Healthier Penang”?