The Project Saving Sea Turtles in the Arabian Gulf

In Partnership With

On 16 June 2026 (World Sea Turtle Day), a green turtle named Foxy slipped beneath the surface of the Arabian Gulf and began swimming away from the shore of Dubai. She had arrived over a year earlier, rescued by a fisherman off the coast of Ras Al Khaimah after losing an entire front flipper. She left fitted with a satellite tracker, her movements now part of a growing dataset that scientists use to understand how sea turtles move, feed, and survive across international waters.

Foxy's release marked a quiet milestone: she was the 100th satellite-tracked turtle returned to the wild by the Dubai Turtle Rehabilitation Project. Since its founding in 2004, the DTRP has rescued, rehabilitated, and released more than 2,350 sea turtles, making it one of the most significant long-term marine conservation efforts in the region.

What Happens at the Lagoon

The heart of the DTRP is a purpose-built rehabilitation sanctuary at Jumeirah Al Naseem hotel in Dubai: a lagoon designed specifically to mirror the conditions turtles experience in the wild. It has direct access to the sea, shallow waters, natural food sources, and underwater caves that allow turtles to rest and regulate their buoyancy as they recover.

This careful design is not incidental. A turtle that has suffered a boat strike or swallowed plastic debris cannot simply be returned to the ocean; it needs time to regain strength, relearn instinctive behaviours, and demonstrate it can survive before it is released. The lagoon provides that bridge between injury and independence.

The turtles in DTRP's care are predominantly green turtles, though hawksbills and (in a notable recent discovery) a juvenile loggerhead turtle have also been treated. Young loggerheads had not previously been recorded in the Gulf, making the find significant enough to prompt further research into whether this species may be nesting in the region.

What Is Threatening Arabian Gulf Sea Turtles

The turtles that arrive at DTRP's lagoon carry the injuries of a marine environment under pressure. Understanding the threats they face is inseparable from understanding why the project exists.

• 🛥️
  Boat strikes: collisions with vessel propellers cause some of the most severe injuries seen at the DTRP, including flipper loss. Foxy herself lost an entire front flipper this way before being rescued.
• 🧴
  Plastic ingestion: turtles mistake floating plastic bags and debris for jellyfish, a primary food source. Ingested plastic causes internal blockages, buoyancy disorders, and often death. Several of the 23 turtles released on World Sea Turtle Day had undergone rehabilitation for plastic ingestion.
• 🌡️
  Warming seas: rising ocean temperatures driven by climate change affect the food sources turtles depend on, disrupt migration patterns, and alter the sex ratios of hatchlings, since nest temperature determines gender.
• 🎣
  Fishing gear entanglement: turtles caught in nets or on longlines can drown or suffer severe injuries before fishermen are aware of their presence.

Why Satellite Tracking Changes the Science

Releasing a rehabilitated turtle is one thing. Understanding where it goes afterward (and what that tells us about the broader health of the Gulf's marine ecosystem) is another. This is where DTRP's satellite tracking programme has produced some of its most valuable work.

The data gathered from over 100 tracked turtles has mapped migration routes across international waters, identified feeding grounds, and built a picture of regional turtle populations that simply did not exist before. Each tracked animal is a data point in an evolving understanding of how healthy the Arabian Gulf's marine environment actually is.

Beyond Turtles: A Wider Marine Commitment

The DTRP sits within a broader conservation effort at Jumeirah. At Jumeirah Al Naseem, in partnership with Dubai Reef (the world's largest purpose-built reef system), coral restoration programmes have already produced over 9,000 coral fragments, working toward a target of 10,000. These corals are redistributed across the Dubai Reef project, one of the most extensive marine restoration initiatives of its kind anywhere.

The work extends across Jumeirah's international properties too: coral planting in the Maldives, reef health monitoring and cleaning dives that have brought back reef fish and eagle rays, and turtle conservation education workshops in Oman and Bali. What began as a response to injured turtles on Dubai's shores has grown into a conservation network spanning multiple countries and ecosystems.

How to Help

The simplest and most direct way to support sea turtle conservation in the UAE is to report an injured, stranded, or distressed turtle immediately. The DTRP operates a dedicated rescue helpline, available 24 hours a day.

You can also visit the Dubai Turtle Rehabilitation Project in person. Educational talks and turtle feeding sessions are held at the Turtle Lagoon at Jumeirah Al Naseem, every Saturday and Sunday at 11:00 AM and 3:30 PM. There is no fee and no booking required: simply arrive ten minutes early and make your way to the lagoon.

To learn more about the DTRP and Jumeirah's broader sustainability work, visit jumeirah.com/sustainability.