Al Sammaliah Island

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January 2002

Al Sammaliah Island. A 32 sq km spread of mangrove, wetland and desert, located some 12 km northeast of Abu Dhabi city in the Arabian Gulf. In time to come, the island will encapsulate the country's heritage - its environmental and cultural diversity. Much of all that reflects the UAE's distinctive personality will be expressed here. Ecosystems representative of the UAE ecosystems. Towards this end, mangroves and other salt-tolerant plants are being grown. Nesting beaches for turtles are being developed. A heritage village is under construction. Local fishes and shrimp are being reared. The habitat is being made attractive for birds - resident and migratory. Truffles are being cultivated. Plus there are honey bee hives, a green house full of exotic and local plant species, as well as facilities for a host of popular traditional sports - horse and camel riding, falconry, shooting, sailing, diving....

Al Sammaliah is the realisation of a vision of Sheikh Sultan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of Emirates Heritage Club (EHC) - established by His Highness with the purpose of preserving the UAE's environmental and cultural heritage, and propagating its knowledge among people, particularly national youth. Al Sammaliah hosts one among eight branches of the EHC. It also hosts the Commission of Environmental Research (CER), set up under EHC as per Sheikh Sultan's wishes, specifically to foster environmental awareness. More than half of the CER's work is, therefore, dedicated to training national students. A summer camp on Al Sammaliah trains hundreds of high school children from the Abu Dhabi emirate each year, involving them in a variety of environmental and cultural activities. Many university students too receive specialized training - over the last three years, for example, national postgraduate students have been working with the CER on a marine atlas programme.

This is the first time, however, that higher colleges freshmen are undergoing an educational experience, at Al Sammaliah, working in environmental projects on flora and fauna; and engaging in selected heritage sport activities. The Al Ain Men's College (AAMC) Foundations Environment and Outdoor Education Project, or simply, the Island Project is being organised jointly by the AAMC, EHC, CER and Emirates Sailing School (ESS, also a part of the EHC). It commenced on September 30th with 46 students, their teachers and EHC researchers, and will continue through two semesters up to April 30th with a break in field activities during Ramadan. Students visit the island every Sunday, spending between 3 - 4 hours there, working in study groups on turtle breeding and conservation, mangrove and salt marsh ecosystems, aquaculture, and bird habitat conservation and research. As heritage activities, they experience sailing and seamanship and horse riding and stable management. By the time the project concludes at the end of two semesters, each participating student will have detailed, hands on experience of two of the four environment topics and both heritage activities; and they will have heard indirectly about the other two environment topics from the 'reporting back' process.

Earthsense joins the Island Project groups over three Sundays to sample their activities.
Al Sammaliah Island is sun-drenched the Sundays we disembark on its shore, having taken the 'island shuttle' across the bay, from Al Raha beach along the Dubai - Abu  Dhabi highway. Skirting the island are white sandy beaches trimmed with date palms, grassy knolls and, at places, mossy greens descending right down to the water's edge.  The greeting on a board welcomes "honorable guests" while below the jetty, millions of juvenile fish congregate, seeking solace in the shady, placid waters. Abdulmonem M. Darwish, head of CER tells us how rich the coast is and, has been, in fishery resources. The name Sammaliah itself is derived from the Arabic word for nets that fishermen would leave on the island, season after fishing season. Originally there were five individual islands. These were amalgamated into a continuous one by infilling the mud flats that separated them; and named Al Sammaliah after the largest isle.


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We accompany Ronald Anthony Loughland (Ron), Valerie McGrath (Val) and David Jenns (Dave) to the point where students groups will be assigned to different projects, passing by salt marshes where waterfowl feed peacefully, clumps of emerald mangrove, and truffles being grown. Desert truffles (fugaa or faqah in Arabic), a culinary delicacy, are fungi that develop underground and are a popular traditional food sought by nationals after early rains. This the first year that these are being cultivated on the island.

The students are assembled by a laboratory surrounding which are the green house, duck hatchery, fish rearing tanks, an aviary and hundreds of halophytes growing in pots. Ron calls out the groups. Birds! Fish! Turtles! Horses! And further broken down - duck group! hatchery group! flamingo group! aviary group! osprey nest builders! You're feeling strong today guys? You have lots of work to do. Have fun!

Groups allocated, binoculars handed over, and students reminded to take notes, we drive away with the osprey nest builders and bird watching group, passing by shallow water bodies - glistening sheets from which air breathing roots of mangrove emerge. As the tide comes in, the shallows and adjoining lands get completely submerged. "We have the tide, moon and the ocean to drive this system. Now isn't that an example of sustainable development?" queries Ron.

We reach a narrow leg of land sporting a raised platform on which the boys will build an osprey's nest by piling and fastening substantial quantities of palm fronds. Ron demonstrates how, and even shows us a picture that appears to be a huge pile of rubbish - that's what an osprey's nest looks like. Osprey (nick named fish hawks because they consume only fish) frequent Al Sammaliah Island and have even settled down on the man made nests built for them, but there hasn't been any breeding success so far. The idea of building more and more nests is to create conditions for the establishment of an osprey breeding colony on the island. The osprey population of Abu Dhabi is considered to be of international importance as the emirate, mainly its islands, holds the bulk of the UAE's breeding population. Once there were many more, but numbers particularly on the mainland have declined in recent years on account of loss of nesting sites, predation by cats, pollution and other disturbances.  We move away as the AAMC boys commence nest building, lugging piles of palm fronds, shells (that the tide has left behind) crunching under their feet. When completed, the nest will be raised to a lofty position with the help of a crane. (As it happened, the boys had to rebuild the nest under supervision on a subsequent visit because it kept getting undone in the process of being lifted).

We now join the bird watching group. Apart from learning, with the aid of a bird book, how to identify species, enumerate them, knowing their feeding habits, preferred habitats, and adaptations, the students are  helping update the checklist of birds of Al Sammaliah Island by recording which species, how many and where, as we move along. Thus far, 42 bird species have been recorded on the island. In addition, there are captive populations of emu, rhea, partridge, pheasant, guinea fowl, kori bustard and ducks that are bred and kept in aviaries.

The bird counts turn into English vocabulary lessons as well, with Val intermittently checking if the 'pied' of pied oyster, 'wading' as the curlews were, 'shore' versus 'open water,' are clearly understood.

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We realise the importance of each student group on the island being accompanied by an AAMC teacher (along with an island expert, of course); so teachers can monitor how much the boys are absorbing, conduct follow up activities in college and report field experiences to other teachers. We observe harriers, herons, dotterels, curlews, egrets, gulls, plovers.....as Ron sustains a flow of interesting ornithological tidbits - why birds have colour, why beaks are shaped the way they are, best time to bird watch...We don't know which species a 'norris' is and ask one of our group members to check in the bird book. He looks it up very seriously but can't find it. Later, he approaches us .."No wonder I couldn't find it in the book. It is Arabic for gull!" he laughs. 

As we return to the point where the boys had split into groups, we watch in fascination as a fish jumps plop-plop across a channel and, further afield, gazelles grazing silently. Hello, what is a fox trap doing here? Foxes have been swimming across to the island over the last few years and have to be captured (in cages that leave the foxes unhurt) as they prey on birds. Ron tells us how much protection and habitat development has enriched wildlife on the island in recent times, drawing in many predators as well.

Back where we started from, an aviary is nearing completion. The boys have lugged in logs, planted trees, put up bird houses, dug up water holes...all for some parrots and, perhaps other species, to be introduced here from Dubai zoo, we are told. Meanwhile, the fish group has finished field work and is now pouring over some fish species in the lab, taking measurements to study age and growth while examining scales under a microscope. Some of the boys can't help crinkle their noses at the fishy smell, yet their absorption with the whole process is absolute; this is, after all something they love to eat!

On Al Sammaliah Island juvenile fish (species such as hamour, rabbit fish, Nile tilapia, redspot emperor and others) and shrimp are being raised in growing tanks that we can see right across the laboratory; then placed in larger cage nets in the open sea, also visible to us bobbing on the waters offshore, mechanical feeders poised over them. There is one enjoyable student activity we haven't witnessed and which, we're told, quite enthralled the boys - being introduced to traditional fishing gear and actually getting to use nets themselves to catch small fish.

Turtle beach is next. One of the activities of CER is the development of marine turtle nesting beaches on Al Sammaliah Island. The aim is to encourage turtles to naturally nest on the island, which has been declared as a wildlife sanctuary. The 'turtle group' is helping the CER establish a nesting beach. Today they are planting vegetation in rows - a native plant with succulent, fleshy leaves - which, when watered will help moisten and soften sands down the slope, making it easier for nesting turtles to dig up and lay their eggs. It is a pretty spot, this. Sweeping white sands reaching down to a blue lagoon (actually, a section along the shore has been cordoned off with fencing) that holds three adult turtles, which we cannot view at present as they are, possibly, busy foraging under water. Ron indulges in turtle talk with the boys as planting gets under way. Nearby is a turtle hatchery. Eggs will be brought here for incubation; hatchlings will scramble out, dive into a water pool within the hatchery and then, out to sea through an outlet.


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Our sojourn on Al Sammaliah Island comes to a close with the 'mangrove group.' We approach a section of the shoreline sheltered from the open sea and descend on a mud flat covered by a translucent sheet of water where the AAMC boys have planted mangroves. The mud flat is sprinkled with pneumatophores, respiratory roots of mangrove sticking out of the slush that is, additionally, adorned with crab holes. Today, however, they are not planting but taking a series of measurements in quadrates aimed at calculating how many mangroves there are on the island.

And while we are still on the subject of mangroves, the AAMC island project boys are, right now (during Ramadan), busy preparing posters on the importance of mangroves to the UAE. These are for a  poster presentation at an international conference on arid zone environments that will be organised by the Environmental Research and Wildlife Development Agency, Abu Dhabi, next month.

Another thing is for sure. A number of environmental facilities on Al Sammaliah Island will, in time to come, carry plaques reading 'made/planted by students of Al Ain Men's College.'

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