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Comment by viztor | Hacker News Reader

That's an entirely different subject isn't it? I don't see how a widen canal would worsen the problem as long as the demand for cross-continental transport persist.

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Not at all. The invasive species in question are salt-water animals that traveled through the canal. If there are no controls in place, a wider canal means a larger volume of water flowing toward the Mediterranean, which means more opportunity for invasive species to find their way through. From the Wikipedia article linked:

> A first look at some groups of exotic species shows that more than 70% of the non-indigenous decapods and about 63% of the exotic fishes occurring in the Mediterranean are of Indo-Pacific origin, introduced into the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal. This makes the Canal the first pathway of arrival of alien species into the Mediterranean.

I don't even understand what "controls" means here? Are you talking about turning the Suez Canal into a filtered lock system able to hold Suezmax class ships (160,000 DWT)? Wouldn't the massive energy usage by pumping/filtering that much water (and the usage by the ship's idle engines while they wait) do more environmental damage than the invasive species?

Obviously the correct engineering solution is underwater laser turrets. Mounted on sharks.

We use electrified barriers to prevent Asian carp spread in the Great Lakes region [0]. I'm not sure of the practicality of something similar in a saltwater canal.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/24/asian-carp-gre...

I was thinking of a filtered lock system, and you're right that that's impractical for the Suez.

What about a gillnet?

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