Paving the Persian Gulf

Editor’s note: This story is part of a project spearheaded by GlobalPost’s Study Abroad team and summer interns. They spent the summer learning about the world’s endangered oceans and their work is displayed in this interactive graphic.

DUBAI, U.A.E. — In the impeccably azure waters off the coast of Dubai swam a staggering diversity of colorful marine life, flashing silver, bright yellow and indigo blue for divers lucky enough to be there.

Michele Taylor, a New Zealander and an avid diver living in Dubai, dove regularly off the coast to add credits to her diving certificate. Suddenly, the waters turned cloudy and murky, rendering the visibility very low.

“The water was horrible,” she recalls. “At times it was like swimming in a soup, and the visibility was shocking.”

Make way for luxury residential and commercial construction, built atop man-made islands along the coast of the Persian Gulf. Island after man-made island has risen out of the ocean, each bigger and more extravagant than the last. The Palms, The World, and The Waterfront are some major projects. Simultaneously, this massive metamorphosis of the ocean’s landscape has bludgeoned the marine environment.

By 2050, 91 percent of the world’s coastlines will have been affected by development, says a 2008 paper authored by eight scientists, “Stemming Decline of the Coastal Ocean: Rethinking Environmental Management," published by the United Nations University seated in Canada. The impacts of coastal development are immense.

The Persian Gulf is a vulnerable environment for marine plants and animals. The water is shallow and the temperatures soar to extreme levels during the summer heat. Water moves very slowly in and out of the area.

“It takes three years for a droplet of water to make a full counter-clockwise turn in the Persian Gulf,” says Nader Ardalan, a research fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University since 2006. “Years can pass before any pollution is expunged.”

Ardalan listed a long history of environmental damage on the Persian Gulf.

"Three wars in the Gulf: Iraq-Iran, 1981; Kuwait War; and the Iraq War in 2003, has impacted the water quality and marine life," says Ardalan, "That’s why it’s a very delicate area."

But more recently, construction has become another factor in endangering the habitat.

To build an island, huge off-shore vessels dredge sand through tubes that vacuum the sea beds. Usually, sand is taken from shipping channels and pumped ashore, explains Bill Taylor of Carol R Johnson Associates, a landscape architecture company headquartered in Boston and involved in projects such as the Shams Central Park on Al Reem Island in Abu Dhabi.

Vacuuming the ocean floor, Taylor says, is vastly damaging. When sand is vacuumed from ocean’s floor, sediments loosen and spread into surrounding areas. Habitats are destroyed.

"Dredging kills animals sucked up into the dredge," explains Hunter Lenihan from the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California-Santa Barbara. It can also loosen sediments containing high quantities of pollutants that migrate with water currents.

Beach towns up and down the East Coast of the U.S. have been dredging sand from the ocean floor and depositing it on local beaches for decades. Useful in the short term, beach replenishment can fight the tides from taking sand back out to sea, but only temporarily, scientists say. The technology originated in the Netherlands, where shallow tidal waters have been filled in for a hundred years to expand a city’s reach.

In the Persian Gulf, sand and rocks are laid into the construction site as the foundation for artificial land.

"Good sites are close to mainland, airports, and urban centers," says Taylor. Shallow waters are cost-friendly for island building as they require less sand and fewer rocks to fill the site.

Shallow waters also are the breeding grounds for marine life and are abundant with coral reefs. Much of Dubai’s construction has been in the marine fertile “intertidal zone,” the zone between the high and low tides. Coral reefs can be asphyxiated under the blanket of sand and rocks.

“Coral reefs are very sensitive to sediment, and they can be destroyed very easily” says Lenihan.

Among the Gulf’s marine life is the dugong. It’s a large, slow-moving, manatee-like mammal that lives in shallow, warm waters and feeds on sea grass. The “World Atlas of Biodiversity,” published by the United Nations Environment Program, shows that major areas of sea grass in the Persian Gulf lie off the coast of Dubai.

The dugong population in the Persian Gulf is believed to be the second-largest in the world, according to "Dugong, Status Report and Action Plans for Countries and Territories," a report published by the U.N. Environment Program. "Seagrass beds in the gulf are also under threat from trawling, land reclamation and dredging. Land reclamation is believed to be one of the greatest threats to the marine environment."

The report says that several large dredging and reclamation projects occur within important dugong habitats in the gulf.

“We are concerned about these mammals that live in the Persian Gulf, especially in Abu Dhabi,” says Bill Taylor.

Beside the manmade island, Dubai will soon be home to an underwater hotel. Construction for Hydropolis started in 2005, but the economic downturn has stymied completion. The cost for the project is $5 trillion, will cover 640 acres and lie 70 to 100 feet below surface.

Hydropolis exemplifies extravagant architecture in Dubai, the place for architects to venture their surreal ideas.

A sustainable ice lodge called Blue Crystal remains in development.

“We try to create an idea, which is unimaginable in landscapes like Dubai,” says Sven Sauer, who came up with the idea of Blue Crystal. “What is impossible to see at this place? An iceberg or ice mountain.”

The global financial slowdown may be the silver lining in that dark cloud for environmental issues.

"The time for expensive experiments in Dubai without a goal is over," said Sauer.

Tim McGirk of Time magazine has written that many of the world’s islands sit empty. "Only one island, belonging to Sheik Mohammed, ended up occupied," said McGirk. "Dubai today has the feel of a futuristic, five-star ghost town blasted by sandstorms."

Learn more about the endangered oceans in an interactive graphic.

This report comes from a journalist in our Student Correspondent Corps, a GlobalPost project training the next generation of foreign correspondents.