Qatar Gas contracted CSA International, Inc. to conduct a coral reef restoration project, designed as mitigation for three pipeline corridors off Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar.
The project consisted of collecting, transporting, and relocating 4,500 living hard corals from the proposed pipeline corridors crossing living coral reefs (Fig. 1). A team of CSA scientific divers, operating under a dive plan approved by RLIC and Qatar Petroleum, removed the corals.
The species, coral colony size, growth form, and health of the corals guided selection for removal. CSA caged the removed corals in metal baskets and transported them 40 km to Fasht al Hurabi, the relocation site approved by Qatar’s supreme council for the environment and natural reserves.
A large vessel transported the removed corals in specially constructed tanks with circulating seawater. CSA attached, tagged, and mapped the corals relative to global positioning system-referenced stakes to facilitate monitoring activities (Fig. 2).
The project was CSA’s 30th for 21 clients in Qatar since 1994.
CSA has completed a total of 36 artificial reef mitigation projects since 1985, including design, site planning and selection, engineering, procurement, transportation, construction, installation, and monitoring.
CSA recently opened new offices in Doha, Qatar, and Port of Spain, Trinidad, to provide environmental and socioeconomic management, impact assessment, mitigation, and monitoring services to oil and gas companies and other industries.