In the Gulf, all energies have been concentrated on war, with roads, equipment, airfields, etc., all straining to meet the demands of the air and ground wars. The Persian Gulf has no sea otters or bald eagles, but it does have a varied indigenous sea-life. The dugongs dwell near Bahrain and Qatar, where the oil is apt to get trapped. The Gulf has the second largest population of dugongs in the world, after Australia. The Nowruz spill killed 400 sea turtles in a few months, and marine ecologists who work in the Gulf expect this to be repeated.
Oyster beds are also likely to be damaged.
The Gulf fisheries which are likely to be damaged are not huge, but they are important locally, and, in the case of shrimp, are just beginning to develop international markets. The evolution of the Persian Gulf into an international fishing area promises to be retarded if not altogether halted by oil spills and toxic releases into the Gulf. As the war began, oil wells in Kuwait were set afire, probably as the result of deliberate efforts by Saddam Hussein and because of allied bombing. Just before the ground war began in late February, Iraq set fire to almost all of Kuwait's approximately 1,000 oil wells, according to U.S. government reports. Some estimate the wells could burn for a year before the fires are extinguished.