(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Doha: The Environmental Science Centre (ESC) at Qatar University (QU) is focused on monitoring and protecting the hawksbill turtles that come to Qatar to nest each year. The staff at the ESC have been able to keep the monitoring effort similar to previous years during the height of COVID-19 lockdown precautions taken by the government.
ESC has noticed a change in nesting behaviour this year among nesting turtles, possibly due to the COVID-19 restrictions on beaches. The total number of turtles coming to Qatar to nest is roughly the same as previous years.
But the big difference ESC noticed is the beaches they are using to nest appears to have changed slightly. Previously, Ras Laffan, Ras Rakkan and Umm Tais have had the majority of nests, however, this year beaches like Al Maroona, Al Ghariyah and Fuwairit have seen huge increases in nesting activity. Al Maroona and Al Ghariyah in particular have seen big gains in nesting activity.
These increases could be due to the fact that these sites normally receive many visitors from April to June which could have deterred nesting activity. However, this year as public access has been restricted, turtles may have preferred nesting on these sites. For the first time since the project's inception, a protected turtle nest hatchery has been erected in Ras Laffan Industrial City.
In recent years, nests on the site have been subject to considerable pressure from fox predation. As such, project partners that work on the site (Qatar Petroleum and the ESC) have taken the step to relocate and protect nests in a protected hatchery on site.
So far, this has been extremely successful by eliminating fox predation as an issue on the site. This measure taken by project partners can also show to other projects around the world that development and effective conservation can exist together.
A crucial part of marine turtle protection in Qatar is understanding where they go when they're not on the beach nesting. To achieve this, the ESC deploys satellite trackers on post nesting turtles each year.
Many important areas have been identified offshore from the tracking data. There appears to be three main home ranges for hawksbills that nest in Qatar. Many of them either migrate back towards the waters off Dubai, south off Mesaieed or west near the Hawar Islands of Bahrain.
This year, for the first time in the project history, ESC staff deployed a satellite tracker on a nesting turtle from Ras Rakkan Island. This is the first time this has been accomplished and will provide valuable information on the post nesting movements of Hawksbills.
So far, this turtle has been seen travelling North West, which is not commonly seen from nesting turtles in Qatar. This may identify to researchers new foraging grounds or areas important to turtles in Qatar and the wider Arabian Gulf.
Dr. Hamad Al Kuwari, Director of the Centre for Environmental Sciences at Qatar University and head of the project said: 'The Environmental Sciences Center at Qatar University is a focal point for many environmental studies concerned with wild and marine wildlife in Qatar. The centre has benefited from its accumulated experiences, research and scientific reports in an attempt to assess and know the numbers of hawksbill turtles annually and their places of spread around the Qatari peninsula and the waters of the Arabian Gulf through tracking them with satellite tracking devices.
'The centre also periodically continues to conduct studies and research in various fields related to this topic whether through own efforts and internal financing by Qatar University or through cooperation with Qatar Petroleum as a supporter of turtle projects, scientific institutions and local researchers, and also through the use of international expertise, researchers are seconded through turtle projects, and this has also led to the centre's researchers benefiting from this international cooperation In raising their levels and scientific expertise, he added.
Dr. Jassim Al Khayyat, the project's Executive Director, stressed the need to preserve the environment and reduce negative practices, stating: 'Despite the global interest in turtles, some wrong practices such as throwing waste, wastewater, oil pollution and other materials and pollutants, overfishing and consumption such as eating eggs, turtle and its flesh, led to many species of sea turtles in the world to the point of extinction.
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