Source: E.B. Worthington, Middle East Science, 1946. Publisher: London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office
Caption of the photo: A new plant at Aqaba for sharp-freezing and cold-storing fish for Palestine.
The paragraph on fish freezing and cold-storing reads in the reference as follows: “The Gulf of Aqaba has recently received special attention as the site for a fishery because it gives access to the Red Sea for Palestine and Transjordan, both of which abut on to the Gulf’s northern tip. For Transjordan, indeed, this is the only possibility of a fishery of any kind, and Arab enterprise has attempted developments there for the past fifteen years or so, but without conspicuous success. Palestine, having a protein shortage during the war and insufficient fish available from other sources, launched a scheme at Aqaba in 1943, with the object of delivering lorry-loads of fish to its main centres of population at least once a week. The method has been to encourage the local Arab fishermen, in the Gulf itself and around the point of Sinai as far as Tor in the Gulf of Suez, to catch more and to sell their catch. The fish so acquired, mostly at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, are taken by a ship of 150 tons, which is specially fitted with refrigerating apparatus, to the village of Aqaba. Here a large plant for quick-freezing and ice-making has been established to receive the fish and to store it at times when road transport is impossible. From Aqaba the fish is taken in refrigerated lorries by the Sinai route to cold stores at Lydda, from where it is redistributed to retailers in the towns”.
