Marine National Park in the Gulf of Kutch is situated on the southern shore of the Gulf of Kutch in the Devbhumi Dwarka district of Gujarat state, India. In 1980, an area of 270 km2 from Okha to Jodiya was declared Marine Sanctuary. Later, in 1982, a core area of 110 km2 was declared Marine National Park under the provisions of the Wildlife (protection) Act, 1972 of India. There are 42 islands on the Jamnagar coast in the Marine National Park, most of them surrounded by reefs. The best-known island is Pirotan. The park protects two major ecosystems, corals and mangroves.

Fauna

The park is home to more than 40 species of sponges, 40 species of hard coral and 10 species of soft coral. Jellyfish, Portuguese man of war and sea anemones are other coelenterates found here. Arthropods include 27 species of prawns, 30 species of crabs, lobsters, shrimps and other crustaceans. Molluscs like pearl oysters and sea slugs are present. Octopus which change colour are also found. Echinoderms like starfish, sea cucumbers and sea urchins are present. The fishes found are puffer fishes, sea horse, sting ray, mudskippers and whale sharks which are an endangered species. Endangered sea turtles such as green sea turtles, olive ridleys and leatherbacks are seen here. There are three species of sea snakes. There are dugongs and smaller cetaceans like finless porpoises, common dolphins, bottlenose dolphins and Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins. Larger whales such as blue whales, sei whales are seen. Humpback whales, and sperm whales may have been almost wiped out due to illegal whaling by the Soviet Union and Japan. Whale sharks can be found in deeper areas. A surprisingly large scale greater flamingo colony, reaching up to 20,000 nests is known to occur along the gulf and many other birds species found here like crab plovers, sandpipers, western reef egret, great egret, ruff, eurasian oystercatcher, greenshanks, redshanks, gulls, skimmers, ducks, pelicans, storks, Godwits, terns. There are 42 islands in the Arabian Sea with coral reefs and the park is situated in one of those.

Biodiversity and conservation challenges

Marine National Park of Gulf of Kutch is a fragile ecosystem. In recent years, biodiversity of marine park has been under threat due to extraction of corals and sands by cement industries, increased turbidity of water, oil refineries, chemical industries and mechanised fishing boats. At present, 31 species of corals are reported in the Marine National Park (Kumar et al. 2014). There were two catastrophic and localised (Adhavan et al. 2014) bleaching events happened in this region.

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