From Spoon Worms to Schiphol

17 February 2011

Three go to Abu Dhabi in search of mangroves

A break in the busy schedule to catch up with the blog - four hours in Schiphol Airport to be exact. We’re on our way back from Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, where we have been surveying Avicennia marina mangrove stands on two islands primed for development.

Though there is only one mangrove species in the UAE, the stands we surveyed were, largely, pretty diverse. Spoon Worms were one of the highlights – an Echiuran (similar to Annelid worms) that surrounds its burrow with mounds of sediment, sometimes rising up some 15cm from the ground to create an undulating surface like volcanic cinder cones. The worm's prostomia (part of the body before the mouth) flaccidly stretches up to 60cm out along the sediment surface to collect organic-rich sediment to deliver back for digestion in the body some 100cm underground in the burrow.

Other invertebrates were in some abundance with three species of crab and seven species of mollusc recorded, together with two species of fish and an abundance of shorebirds, either feeding in the mangroves and mudflats or roosting on the sabkhah flats beyond the shore at high tide.

We surveyed quadrats to assess the health of the mangroves and to ground truth aerial and satellite imagery of the islands so that we can advise the development masterplanners on how best to protect the mangroves in their designs.