Welcome visitors: school of rarely seen dolphins arrives in Abu Dhabi
▶ Sighting of humpbacks sign the mammals can thrive in busy shipping channel
A group of humpback dolphins and a calf were spotted swimming in the Hudayriat channel just off Abu Dhabi.
While the species can be seen in UAE waters, it is unusual for a whole pod to be caught on camera.
The spotting of the group is a positive sign for marine conservationists, indicating that the dolphins continue to thrive even in a congested shipping channel.
“Dolphins are good indicators of the condition of the overall marine environment they inhabit,” said Rob Chinman, from the Jalboot Marine Network, which runs tours of the islands off the coast of the capital.
Mr Chinman was aboard one of the company’s sightseeing vessels when he filmed the dolphins, almost two weeks ago.
“The dolphins were spotted in the channel running through the island, while one of our 40-passenger catamaran fast ferries was out on a private charter. I caught the footage on my smartphone, with a deckhand stepping out on the bow of the boat to get the best video possible”, he said.
The footage was shared with the UAE Dolphin Project, which researches the dolphin population along the UAE coastline.
The project encourages individuals who have seen dolphins in the UAE to register the sighting to aid research about the mammals.
The project’s experts said that the dolphins that do flock to the shores of the UAE are the Indo-Pacific bottlenose and humpback dolphins, as well as the finless porpoise, “the most difficult of the three to spot”.
Dr Ada Natoli, founder of the initiative, said that it was not unusual for dolphins to be swimming around the Hudayriat channel.
“It’s pretty normal for humpback dolphins to encounter the Jalboot Marine workers. They are coastal species and generally stay also in riverine and shallow water habitats,” she said. “So in a nutshell, I would say that dolphins in UAE coastal waters are pretty frequent. Definitely more than what the public think.”
The UAE dolphin population faces threats from environmental changes, one of which is the significant amount of marine traffic in the area.
Dr Natoli said that “habitat loss and disturbance is more evident in the UAE, in addition to land reclamation and increasing boat traffic”.
But, she said, “in the UAE we don’t really have enough scientific data to determine the actual impact of each of the environmental threats on the local population”.
“This doesn’t mean that those factors do not influence the local dolphin population.”
Al Mahara Diving Centre’s captain, Sanjay Fernando, said he often comes across dolphins around Abu Dhabi’s coast, in some cases he sees groups of up to 50 dolphins swimming close to the beach off Emirates Palace.
“In the winter I usually see small groups of dolphins around the Eastern Mangroves and Bateen channel. Also outside the Emirates Palace there are groups of 40 to 50 altogether – this is the place that you would often see them,” he said.
“I would presume it’s their place of habitat.”
In February, Environment Agency Abu Dhabi announced it would significantly expand the emirate’s legally protected natural reserves, meaning that 15 per cent of the emirate’s land and 13 per cent of its water will be covered by 2020.
It will also triple its rehabilitation and breeding programmes for endangered animals such as the Arabian oryx.
“Our primary focus must be to ensure that development does not come at an unacceptable cost to the environment, to ensure that it goes hand in hand with conservation and sustainability,” Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed, chairman of the environment agency, said at the time.
Dolphins are good indicators of the condition of the overall marine environment they inhabit