Sabah Al Ahmad Sea City


Sabah Al Ahmad Sea City is a planned community in Khiran Kuwait built with canals forming of artificial shoreline. The community is intended to house 250,000 residents. The city was inaugurated in mid 2015. The artificial islands that make up this community are unusual because they were built excavating large channels in desert land rather than using reclaimed land.
The first phase of the project was opened to the sea in 2004 The multi-billion dollar development is in the middle of a 25 year construction period, with ten planned phases.

Environmental impact

The environmental impact of the development, from the standpoint of marine life, has been seen as positive. According to studies of the development:
Within the waterways, a full range of man-made marine habitats have been created. These include intertidal beaches, tidal flats, mangrove and salt marshes on islands, together with subtidal sand and rock benthic habitats. These have been monitored with daily physical and annual biological surveys. Importantly, this data provides new information on the natural colonization rates and development of Gulf soft.substrate intertidal and subtidal marine communities. Within 5 years of opening to the sea, all artificially created marine habitats have a species richness and abundance close to, or exceeding, that of similar open sea natural habitats in Kuwait. Over 1000 species of macrobiota now exist within the desert waterways including 100 species of fish and shellfish.

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