Holding Fast

Image © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford
"Suaid boy with a tarada." Eastern marshes, 1956, by WIlfred Thesiger. The seasonal Eastern Marshes - that is, those east of the Shatt Al-Arab within Basra Governorate - no longer exist. They were among the first drained by a kilometer-wide canal dug to divert Tigris overflows directly to the Shatt Al-Arab. Return water from the southern Majnoon oil fields located in that former marsh zone is one candidate for salt marsh construction. #cmarsh