Since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, commercial traffic has reduced by 95%, with serious implications for global fuel supplies. The blockade has been enforced with missiles, drones, and mines. However, while oil fixates the minds of the public, there is more to the Strait than the flow of fossil fuels. Hormuz is a hotspot of biodiversity in an otherwise inhospitable region. With high summer water temperatures and salinity, the Persian Gulf’s ecosystems are uniquely adapted to living on the edge.
Qeshm, the Strait’s largest island, has been identified as an area of biological and ecological significance by the Global Convention on Biological Diversity. Nearby areas have also achieved this designation for their uniqueness, and for their role as foraging, breeding and nursery sites for endangered species. Expansive mangrove forests around the island house over 100 bird species and act as essential wintering sites for shorebirds and gulls. These provide rare breeding sites for many threatened and regionally specific birds, including Great Egrets, Eurasian Spoonbills, and Sanders Terns. Climate change already threatens these forests, with a third of the world’s mangroves lost over the last 50 years.
Despite high temperatures which typically cause bleaching, the surrounding waters contain the Gulf’s richest coral reefs, creating breeding and foraging sites for sharks, rays, skates and over 700 fish species.
Nearby, seagrass meadows host the world’s second biggest dugong population, and islands provide refuge for five sea turtle species including the endangered Green turtle and Hawksbill turtle. The Gulf also serves as a migration path for whales and is home to rare dolphins and sea snakes.
So how does war threaten this diverse, fragile environment?
With Iran targeting oil tankers, spill risks are at an all-time high. Oil destroys the water repellence of fur and feathers, dolphins and whales may breathe it in, and turtles can mistake it for food. Since 1958, oil spills have destroyed 126,000 hectares of mangroves, partly by covering trees’ roots and suffocating them. Burning tankers release more than just crude oil, spewing a toxic combination of chemicals which would rapidly reach the Gulf’s shallow seafloor.
Furthermore, warm, salty waters corrode sunken material rapidly, accelerating toxic effects. Surface explosions cause underwater shockwaves, disorientating animals, damaging their hearing, and leading to injury, whilst mines can disturb habitats where they land. Qeshm itself has become an American target, and strikes on infrastructure threaten precious ecological sites.
Human conflict has threatened the Gulf before, the waters carrying scars of another American war. In 1991, to prevent marine landings, Iraqi forces dumped crude oil in history’s second largest spill – covering 600km of coastline. Ecosystems are still recovering. The parallels seem obvious. Just like Iraq in 1991, Iran is disrupting oil markets as a strategy of resistance. And now, that oil threatens aquatic life, just as it did 30 years ago.
The ecological stakes are clear. Greenpeace described fossil fuel over-reliance as threatening “peace, security and prosperity.” Could this be the long overdue wake-up call to trigger a transition from fossil fuels? This transition may be necessary to safeguard life in the Persian Gulf from the dual threats of climate change and conflict.
Photo by hiva sharifi on Unsplash