2023-12-08 20:42:00
Aboard a boat anchored off the Daymaniyat Islands in the Sultanate of Oman, volunteer divers put on their wetsuits, check their oxygen tanks and take turns diving into crystal-clear turquoise water.
This is a cleaning operation. Divers will remove huge fishing nets caught in a coral reef system.
An example of cooperation between volunteers and authorities to mitigate human-caused damage to the marine environment.
“Reefs are a habitat and refuge for marine wildlife,” says Hammoud al-Nayri of Oman’s Environmental Authority, observing the divers.
“To protect marine ecosystems, we must preserve coral reefs,” underlines this 45-year-old man, who supervises the Daymaniyat Islands, the only marine reserve in the sultanate, around 40 km off the coast of the capital Muscat.
Most shallow-water corals, bleached by marine heat waves, are unlikely to survive the century, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said last year.
According to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, global warming, along with dynamite fishing and pollution, caused 14% of the world’s reefs to disappear between 2009 and 2018.
But Oman’s relatively cool waters help preserve the sultanate’s coral reefs, which are among the least studied in the world.
“Oman’s reefs are considered relatively less vulnerable than those in other regions,” says John Burt, professor of biology at New York University in Abu Dhabi.
“This is largely due to the influence of the monsoon,” he adds. He explains that “during peak summer temperatures and reef bleaching in most areas, the Indian Ocean monsoon intensifies in southern Oman, significantly cooling the water “.
“An immense environmental treasure”
Oman’s reefs are not, however, immune to sea warming.
The sultanate experienced its last major bleaching episode during the summer of 2021, when sea temperatures were particularly high, recalls Mr. Burt.
Cyclones, which are increasingly frequent, constitute another risk factor. Between 2005 and 2010, more than half of Oman’s corals disappeared due to supercyclone Gonu in 2007, cyclone Phet in 2010 and an algae bloom in 2008-2009, according to the expert.
“We’ve had over a decade of recovery in the meantime, which has allowed the coral to come back to these reefs,” he says.
To protect the reefs from fishing nets and starfish that attack them, Hasan Farsi dives every week in Daymaniyat to inspect the damage.
The son of a fisherman, he records the GPS coordinates of the damaged areas and sends them to the Ministry of the Environment so that they can be designated as clean-up areas.
He then joins dozens of volunteers who dive to extract fishing nets and starfish to preserve what he considers “an immense environmental treasure”.
“Because of the poor practices of fishermen, the coral reefs are deteriorating from year to year,” notes this 52-year-old diving instructor. “Without cleaning, they would be totally destroyed.”
Database
Mr. Farsi is not alone. Jenan Al Asfoor, a diver and trainer, is a central figure in the reef conservation effort. At 40, she runs Reef Check Oman, which is part of the global Reef Check network.
The organization was created in 2019 with the aim of building a database of the country’s reefs, to monitor them and identify threats to them.
Over the years, the organization has conducted several missions across the country.
“During these studies, we noticed that there was not a lot of bleaching… Most of the reefs studied appear healthy,” Ms Asfoor said.
According to her, these reefs have also adapted to the high salinity of the Arabian Seas. “We have an ecosystem here that is not found anywhere else” and “our goal at Reef Check Oman is to protect it for future generations.”
08/12/2023 19:41:00 – ILES DAYMANIYAT (Oman) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
#Volunteer #divers #sentinels #Omans #unique #coral #reef