Today's Edition
KHALED AL KHAWALDEH (Abu Dhabi)
Despite the high salinity and temperatures of the Arabian Gulf, Abu Dhabi’s shores contain nearly 4% of the world’s seagrass meadows, one of the highest single concentrations anywhere in the world.
From providing a habitat for countless marine species, including dugongs, to acting as a powerful carbon sink, these underwater gardens quietly contribute to the balance of the earth’s fragile marine ecosystems. Yet they are facing unprecedented challenges; threatened by coastal development, pollution, and climate change, these resilient plants are disappearing at an alarming rate.
Now, a small team of scientist at Sea World Abu Dhabi are hoping to find ways to reverse these impacts, and pioneer new methods of restoring and growing the UAE’s seagrass meadows to their full potential.
Speaking to Aletihad, Dr. Elise Marquis, a marine ecologist who has spent the last 15 years studying the Arabian Gulf, said the new research programme that she is leading at Sea World is generating international interest, with ambitions to change the way people think about the conservation of seagrass.
“There was a mentality for many, many years that didn’t care for the seagrass, but now that we realise they are actually a food source, a nursery for small fish, they sequester lots of carbon, there is more and more focus on them here in the Gulf,” Dr. Elise told Aletihad.
“There are three species living here in the Gulf. We don’t know much about them at all, but they are very important. What we are doing is looking at the basic biology and physiology of the species here and trying to develop new techniques and methods to restore them.”
Pointing to a map of seagrass meadows produced by the Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD), Dr. Elise highlighted how much of the habitats lie on the shallow coastal plains of the emirate, putting them at risk of upheaval by development. A process that both releases previously sequestered carbon and does substantial damage to marine ecosystems.
“I think because there has been a lot of coastal development, there has most probably been a lot of loss of meadows over the years that is not being properly quantified,” she said.
“There have been some attempts over the years to restore meadows around the world, but those processes usually degrade the original patch… we are aiming to do something more sustainable.”
Taking Aletihad through the state-of-the-art lab inside Sea World Abu Dhabi’s research and Rescue centre in Yas Island, Dr. Elise said that the key idea is to be able to study the flowering methods of the plants to be able to recreate them in the wild.
Currently the project is in its early stages, but the team hopes to be able to generate a variety of data on the understudied plants, including accurately measuring their carbon sequestration rate, and understanding what makes them so resilient to the high heat and salinity of the Arabian Gulf.
“We will grow the nursery so we can set up the right cultivation method, then find the right conditions to then to be able to trigger the flowering. We don’t know what those conditions are because it’s not been studied properly,” she explained.
“We don’t know if and when the species flower in the wild. So, it’s one thing that we will be looking at. The seeds of the species we have here are very, very small so it’s not easy to see. So essentially, we are looking at what’s happening in the wild and trying to do it in our laboratory, so that we can reproduce it and therefore restore the plants on a large scale.”
