Visitors to the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi now have a rare opportunity to see some of the hidden underwater wonders in the region.
Experts used powerful cameras to film videos of life deep in the region's waters, before turning the footage into a digital experience that allows users to feel like they are diving deep under the sea.
They found plants and animals that were not previously not known to be in Gulf waters, including a species of shark.
The virtual submersible experience, called the OceanX Portal, will be open at the museum until December 2026.
It was launched in partnership with non-profit ocean exploration initiative OceanX and New York University Abu Dhabi.
The National spoke with OceanX founder and co-chief executive Mark Dalio and John Burt, professor of biology at NYUAD and co-director of the Mubadala Arabian Centre for Climate and Environmental Sciences, to know more about the programme putting the region's marine ecosystems in the spotlight.
“I think when you talk to folks in Abu Dhabi, there is maybe an appreciation of their waters but not a full understanding,” Mr Dalio said.
“So we hope to spark curiosity, in a way that they can better understand, about the importance that their waters hold and the exciting ways that they can know more about it, but also hopefully get in the water themselves one day and either scuba dive or snorkel.”
Abu Dhabi as a marine research powerhouse
Hopes are high for Abu Dhabi to become a hub of marine research that fosters global collaborations, especially with countries in Asia, attracting researchers along the way.
An example of this is OceanX's partnership with researchers in Malaysia, which aims to increase cross-country collaboration, for a united front against climate change with future policy impacts.
“With Abu Dhabi sitting essentially between the East and the West, it plays a pivotal role in being able to build collaborations and being able to lend out olive branches, and likewise for Asia to lend out olive branches for more collaborations because the ocean shouldn't have any borders in terms of the animal life,” Mr Dalio said.
“Being able to have scientific and educational collaborations between countries can lead to healthier oceans and also cross-learning and cross-dialogues that hopefully can have positive policy changes.”
People may think that ocean conservation is an area specifically tailored to marine biologists, but this is not the reality, Mr Dalio said. He wants to debunk the myth and show that people from many fields have plenty to offer in this sector.
“The oceans are in desperate need of the greatest talent from across industries, and most people think that they don't have a part to play from a career perspective, and I think that's a big one that I want to change the narrative on,” he told The National.
“You can be a data scientist, you can be an expert in AI, you can be an engineer, you can be more on the non-profit side as well.”
The importance of UAE marine research
The UAE sits on the hottest waters in the world, where climate-resilient corals face extreme temperatures during summers. Mr Burt and Mr Dalio agreed that the Arabian Gulf provides a blueprint for the future of marine ecosystems, and it can provide insights into corals experiencing the effects of global warming around the world.
“We've done pilot studies where we've crossbred corals from the Arabian Gulf with corals from the Indian Ocean and the Great Barrier Reef, and what we see is the offspring, the hybrids, have an 84 per cent higher survivorship under extreme temperatures than natives of those like Indian Ocean or Great Barrier Reef populations. So this opens up lots of opportunities, for example reef restoration,” Mr Burt said.
When the team explored the waters of the Gulf of Oman two years ago in a submersible, they did not expect to find species previously unseen in the region right as they landed on the seabed.
Not one but 17 bramble sharks, a threatened deepwater species, were spotted by the researchers. They also found the first mesophytic corals seen in the Gulf of Oman, both of which are featured in the Portal.
“We have an amazing array of ecosystems that are out there that are largely undiscovered”, Mr Burt said. “We know very little about what happens beneath the shallows. We actually have more data and exploration that's going on in space than we have in the world's oceans.”
Ocean systems faces many pressures, including human-caused pressures which can have lasting effects above the shore. Overfishing, climate change and pollution threaten the balance of this fragile vital ecosystem.
“Some of the pressures are good. In terms of putting in offshore wind farms, trying to get to a state of renewable energy productivity. But others like deep sea mining do represent both an economic opportunity but also risk. These are things that I think really need a lot more evaluation and exploration before we can move forward,” Mr Burt said.
The UAE has made marine research one of the priorities in the fight against climate change. In addition to NYU Abu Dhabi's coral research, Khor Fakkan's new Sharjah Marine Science Research Centre leads marine exploration on the UAE's East coast, and coral planting initiatives are widespread with high targets.
The Environment Agency Abu Dhabi (EAD) is at the helm of an initiative to plant over four million coral colonies by 2030.
“From a tourism standpoint, the more that we're able to protect the waters here and use it in a way that kind of the public engages with their waters in a sustainable way to create eco-tourism”, Mr Dalio said.
“By revealing newly documented coral and shark species and exploring the remarkable resilience of our local seas, this 360-degree dome experience reinforces our commitment to creating awe, wonder, and a sense of amazement for everyone who walks through our doors,” said Judith Finlay-Mcalestar, acting collection director.
