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Satellite imagery has shown oil from a spill off the southern coast of Iran's Qeshm Island reaching the Hara mangrove forests, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in the Persian Gulf.
Oily residues were first observed on the evening of 2 August 2026 along about a kilometre of beach near Shib Deraz and Soza, before spreading to the mangroves near Naqasheh village.
The European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellite captured imagery of the affected waters on 10 August 2026; Iran claimed extensive pollution damage as the slicks spread.
The Hara forests consist mainly of grey mangrove (Avicennia marina) and were designated a UNESCO Man and the Biosphere reserve in 1976.
The reserve covers about 206,244 hectares in all, and lies at the Strait of Khuran, itself a Ramsar site.
Mangroves survive in saltwater through a specialised filtration system in their roots, and many species breathe through aerial roots that project above the waterlogged mud to take in oxygen. Oil is destructive on both counts: it coats those breathing roots and smothers them, and it settles into fine sediment where low oxygen slows the bacterial breakdown that disperses oil on an open shore. The consequence is that a mangrove oil spill is not a surface event that a tide clears; it is a sediment event that can persist for years and kill trees long after the visible slick has gone. Because the same root systems hold the coast against erosion, store large quantities of carbon and shelter the juvenile fish, shrimp and crab on which local fisheries depend, the loss cascades well beyond the trees themselves.
Simple Analogy: Mangrove roots breathe through snorkels poking out of the mud. Oil is a film across every snorkel at once - and mud, unlike sand, does not wash clean.
UNESCO's intergovernmental scientific programme, launched in 1971, under which biosphere reserves such as Hara are designated; India has its own set of MAB-listed reserves including the Sundarbans, Nilgiri and Gulf of Mannar.
The Strait of Khuran is a Ramsar site; the convention, adopted in 1971 at Ramsar in Iran, is the reason a great many wetland questions cite an Iranian town.
Carbon captured and stored by coastal and marine ecosystems - mangroves, seagrass and salt marsh - at rates well above those of terrestrial forest.
The same grey mangrove species is widespread along India's coasts, including in the Gulf of Kachchh and the Sundarbans.
GS Paper III > Environment > Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation; GS Paper I > Geography > Important geophysical features and world resources
General Awareness > Environment and world geography
Salt-tolerant trees and shrubs of the intertidal zone, with root systems adapted to filter salt and to take in oxygen from air rather than waterlogged mud.
The grey mangrove; the dominant species of the Hara forests and one of the most widely distributed mangroves in the Indo-Pacific.
An area designated under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme to reconcile conservation with sustainable use, typically zoned into core, buffer and transition areas.
Carbon captured and stored by coastal and marine ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrass meadows and salt marshes.
A wetland of international importance designated under the Ramsar Convention of 1971.