UAE turns to coral reef nursery to restore damaged coral

On a boat off the coast of an island near Abu Dhabi, marine scientist Hamad al-Jailani touches and studies corals picked from a reef nursery and packed in boxes of seawater, Make sure they are not faded.

Corals were once bleached. Now they are big and healthy and ready to move back to their original reef, hopefully they will thrive again.

“We’ve tried to grow them from very small fragments to – and now some of them are – the size of my fist,” said al-Jailani, who is part of the Coral Restoration Program at the Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi (EAD).

Photo: Associated Press

Nurseries provide corals with ideal conditions for recovery: clear water, strong currents, and just the right amount of sunlight.

Al-Jailani regularly checks the corals for growth, removes any potentially harmful algae and seagrass, and even cleans them by feeding on the corals until they are healthy enough to relocate.

EAD has been repairing and restoring coral since 2021, when reefs off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) faced their second bleaching event in just five years.

EAD’s project is one of many public and private initiatives to protect coral reefs and the marine life that depend on them across the country in a country that has come under fire for the harm it has done to underwater ecosystems from large-scale development and polluting industries.

Some progress has been made, but experts remain concerned about the future of coral reefs in a warming world.

Coral bleaching occurs when sea temperatures rise and solar glare washes out the algae that give corals their color, turning them white. Corals can survive bleaching events but cannot support marine life as efficiently, threatening the populations that depend on them.

The UAE lost up to 70 percent of its corals in 2017, especially around Abu Dhabi, when water temperatures reached 37°C, the EAD said.

However, al-Jailani said 40% to 50% of corals survived a second bleaching event in 2021.

While the bleaching event “did wipe out most of our corals,” he said, “it also did demonstrate that the corals we have are actually resilient. [and] Such conditions can actually be tolerated. “

As human-caused climate change warms waters, bleaching events are occurring more frequently around the world as the burning of oil, coal and natural gas releases heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

Other coral reef systems around the world have also suffered mass bleaching events, most notably Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

This year’s United Nations climate conference in Dubai will discuss in detail how to limit global warming and its effects.

The UAE is one of the world’s largest oil producers and one of the world’s highest per capita CO2 emitters.

The country has pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, meaning all carbon dioxide emissions would be cut or eliminated, but the target has been questioned by analysts.

However, bleaching due to warmer weather is not the only threat facing coral reefs around the bay. High tanker traffic, fossil fuel-related activities, offshore installations and the extraction of marine resources are putting enormous pressure on marine life, leading to their degradation, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

Environmentalists have long criticized the UAE, especially Dubai, for its massive construction and huge coastal developments.

Construction on Palm Jebel Ali began more than a decade ago and has been on hold since 2008, prompting an outcry from environmentalists after reportedly destroying some 8 square kilometers of coral reef.