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 Most westerly of the UAE's offshore possessions, Ghagha' is a small group of islands around a lagoon and is visited occasionally by local fishermen. There is also a Coastguard station.
Just north of the Sila'a peninsula, the Ghagha' group is composed primarily of low-lying sandy areas, sometimes little more than a raised beach, with relict beach-rock outcrops in some areas. The centre of the main island, also called Ghagha', is a rough saucer-shaped basin, where water gathers after rainfall.
Several pairs of ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) nest on Ghagha', while dugongs Dugong dugon are found in adjacent waters. The small island of Khardal, to the north, is the site of a major colony of the endangered Socotra cormorant (Phalocrocorax nigrogularis). Ghagha' has been occupied by man for at least 7000 years, with archaeological sites from the Late Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the pre-Islamic period and throughout the Islamic era. A village on the island, now abandoned, was once a seasonal market for the pearling industry.
Settlement on the island was made possible through the construction of a water catchment system that trapped rainfall in the central basin. Unlike most of the UAE's islands, there was sufficient water to permit the cultivation of date palms (Phoenix dactylifera), and some abandoned palm groves and wells still survive.
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