La Ala Al Kuwait

The La’ala Al Kuwait team of scientists are dedicated and passionate about the environment.
The monitoring capability of the environmental team includes the installation, operation and maintenance of a wide range of equipment, both terrestrial and marine.

The range of equipment applied to environmental monitoring includes:

• Water quality dip probes (range of determinants)
• Water sampling tubes, for various depths and various parameters
• Marine sediment sampling grabs and corers
• Valeport current meters
• Acoustic tide gauge
• Terrestrial ecology identification ‘apps’
• Marine ecology identification tools

The managed monitoring include daily monitoring protocols, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly and annual regimes as required by determinant and objective.

Major achievements include the identification of nearly 1500 marine species, and over 250 terrestrial species in the south of Kuwait. The identification of a number of arthropods new to science, and the collection of individuals of a fish and nudibranch which are believed to be new records, and a range of first sightings in the northern gulf.

As part of their Environmental commitment, the environmentalists at La’ala contribute time, resources and initiatives in delivering environmental enhancements in Kuwait.

Enhancement projects include:

• Habitat creation, and the reintroduction of the grey mangrove to the south of Kuwait. The project has completed the mangrove life cycle, taking seeds produced on planted seedlings, and then growing them to maturity.
• Sea grass expansion; only growing vegetatively in Kuwait, the team take pallet tiles of plant, rhizome and soil and relocate into carefully selected recipient sites.
• Coral expansion; applying two different coral nursery techniques, the scientific team collect specially selected donor coral nubbins, place in their environmentally protected and controlled nursery sites where they are grown on in an accelerated manner, then transplanted into new reef areas.