Hawar Islands

The Hawar Islands, a Ramsar-designated wetland system off Bahrain's southern coast, harbour the Arabian Gulf's most important dugong population and offer one of the world's most unusual diving experiences — sharing the water with these gentle marine mammals in a landscape of seagrass meadows and coral patches. Sea turtles nest on the beaches and forage year-round in the clear, protected waters, while the fringing reefs support an intact fish community rarely seen in developed Gulf coastal zones. This is conservation diving at its most affecting.