UAQ targets marine conservation

Research centre aims to boost at-risk local fish population.

Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed inspects the newly opened Khalifa Bin Zayed Centre for Marine Research in Umm Al Quwain. Antonie Robertson / The National.

UMM AL QUWAIN // Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Presidential Affairs, toured the Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Centre for Marine Research on Wednesday.

The centre is being built as part of President Sheikh Khalifa’s initiatives to protect fisheries and keep the marine environment free from pollution.

The Dh75 million centre is being built with a grant from the President.

It will open in five phases, the first of which is a hatchery, to be followed by a research centre, laboratories, the expansion of a hatchery for endangered species and an education centre.

Sheikh Mansour said the establishment of the centre reflected the President’s attention to “our national resources as a strategic reserve for future generations”, reported Wam, the state news agency.

“This project has a lot of benefits for the country; it is an environmental project, and it is also a project that is directed to protect our marine and environment and to help stocking our fish with selecting local species,” said Dr Rashid bin Fahd, Minister of Environment and Water.

Dr bin Fahad said the Government has adopted a long-term strategy to guarantee food and environmental security and to develop and sustain national resources for future generations.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, aquaculture will supply more than 50 per cent of the world’s fish consumption in the years ahead.

The minister said that over-exploitation of marine resources and deterioration of some eco-systems were among the challenges facing the UAE.

A comparison between a study by the FAO in 1978 and a GCC survey from 2008 to 2011, showed a fall of 25.2 per cent in fish caught in the UAE. Fish stocks living at greater depths dropped by 88 per cent and 94 per cent, respectively, in UAE territorial waters overlooking the Arabian Gulf and Sea of Oman.

The centre will begin hatching fingerlings by the end of the year, Wam reported. The hatchery’s first phase focuses on producing local fish such as hammour, subaiti, sheim and gabbit.

“The hatchery is complex and made out of different departments,” said Mariam Hareb, director of project management at the ministry. “There is a water treatment section, pump room, nursery and oxygen supplying.”

The centre will hatch 3.5 million fingerlings from commercial fish species in the first year, 6.5 million in the following year until production reaches 10 million a year in the third year.