Charna Island (also spelled Churna Island; ur, جزیرہ چرنا) is located near

Mubarak Goth Mubarak Goth or Mubarak Village ( ur, ) is a fishing village in Kiamari Town in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. It is located along the shore of Arabian Sea in Keamari District. Demography The village is 30 km away from city center with a ...

Kiamari Town Keamari Town ( ur, ) lies in the southern part of the city that was named after the historic seaside municipality of Keamari. Kemari Town was formed in 2001 as part of The Local Government Ordinance 2001, and was subdivided into 11 union counc ...

Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former c ...

Sindh Sindh (; ; ur, , ; historically romanized as Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southeastern region of the country, Sindh is the third-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the second-largest province ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

. Churna Island is a small, uninhabited island located in the

Arabian Sea The Arabian Sea ( ar, اَلْبَحرْ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Bahr al-ˁArabī) is a region of the northern Indian Ocean bounded on the north by Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channe ...

, about west of the mouth of the

Hub River Hub River ( ur, دریائے حب) is located in Hub District, Balochistan, Pakistan. It starts from the Pab Range in the south eastern Balochistan and continues along the border of Sindh and reaches Hub and then falls into the Arabian Sea. "Ha ...

called "Manjhar Beach", at the boundary between the provinces of

Balochistan Balochistan ( ; bal, بلۏچستان; also romanised as Baluchistan and Baluchestan) is a historical region in Western and South Asia, located in the Iranian plateau's far southeast and bordering the Indian Plate and the Arabian Sea coastline. ...

and

. Charna is approximately long and wide. Charna is also locally known "Cheerno". It is 6 km away from Mubarak Village. Fishermen from

go fishing near Charna Island. Mubarak Goth is the second largest fisherman locality in

; nevertheless, it lacks basic amenities including education,

health care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health pr ...

, jetties, ownership rights and communication. On August 04, 2020, Pakistan has released a new political map that first time shows the Islands of Churna and Astola.

Background

Churna is mostly used as a firing range by the

Pakistan Navy ur, ہمارے لیے اللّٰہ کافی ہے اور وہ بہترین کارساز ہے۔ English: Allah is Sufficient for us - and what an excellent (reliable) Trustee (of affairs) is He!(''Qur'an, 3:173'') , type ...

. It is also used by tourists for activities such as

scuba diving Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving whereby divers use breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface air supply. The name "scuba", an acronym for " Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was coined by Chr ...

freediving Freediving, free-diving, free diving, breath-hold diving, or skin diving is a form of underwater diving that relies on breath-holding until resurfacing rather than the use of breathing apparatus such as scuba gear. Besides the limits of breath- ...

underwater photography Underwater photography is the process of taking photographs while under water. It is usually done while scuba diving, but can be done while diving on surface supply, snorkeling, swimming, from a submersible or remotely operated underwater ...

hiking Hiking is a long, vigorous walk, usually on trails or footpaths in the countryside. Walking for pleasure developed in Europe during the eighteenth century.AMATO, JOSEPH A. "Mind over Foot: Romantic Walking and Rambling." In ''On Foot: A Histor ...

, speed boating, kneeboarding,

wakesurfing Wakesurfing is a water sport in which a rider trails behind a boat, riding the boat's wake without being directly pulled by the boat. After getting up on the wake, typically by use of a tow rope, the wakesurfers will drop the rope, and ride the ...

, banana tubing,

jet skiing A personal watercraft (PWC), also called water scooter or jet ski, is a recreational watercraft that a rider sits or stands on, not within, as in a boat. PWCs have two style categories, first and most popular being a runabout or "sit down" whe ...

, cliff diving and

snorkeling Snorkeling ( British and Commonwealth English spelling: snorkelling) is the practice of swimming on or through a body of water while equipped with a diving mask, a shaped breathing tube called a snorkel, and usually swimfins. In cooler waters ...

. The area surrounding Charna is popular for scuba diving because of the presence of widely varied marine life and different kinds of coral reef. According to Yousuf Ali, founder of the Karachi Scuba Diving Centre, "there are more than 60 types of corals found near Charna waters and many new corals started to flourish" after the

2004 Indian Ocean tsunami An earthquake and a tsunami, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami and, by the scientific community, the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, occurred at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+7) on 26 December 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Suma ...

Jellyfish Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals with umbre ...

are found in large numbers during October.

Wildlife

On 14 September 2017, a mother

blue whale The blue whale (''Balaenoptera musculus'') is a marine mammal and a baleen whale. Reaching a maximum confirmed length of and weighing up to , it is the largest animal known to have ever existed. The blue whale's long and slender body can ...

was spotted near the island along with her calf. The mother was 17 meters in length. This was a first sighting of a living blue whale in the Pakistani sea, as previous blue whales were just beached skeletons of the dead whales; the last specimen had been observed at Khuddi Creek along the coast of Sindh in August 2014. There have been 47 sightings of

baleen whale Baleen whales ( systematic name Mysticeti), also known as whalebone whales, are a parvorder of carnivorous marine mammals of the infraorder Cetacea ( whales, dolphins and porpoises) which use keratinaceous baleen plates (or "whalebone") in t ...

s in this area but none of them were blue whales. On 22 November 2017, a

killer whale The orca or killer whale (''Orcinus orca'') is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member. It is the only extant species in the genus ''Orcinus'' and is recognizable by its black-and-white pat ...

was spotted near the island, a rare sighting as killer whales are found in deep water, whereas the depth of the water where the whale was sighted was only 72 meters deep. It was also the first sighting of a killer whale in the Karachi area since 2003. Other marine life around Charna includes the

yellow-bellied sea snake The yellow-bellied sea snake (''Hydrophis platurus'') is a venomous species of snake from the subfamily Hydrophiinae (the sea snakes) found in tropical oceanic waters around the world except for the Atlantic Ocean. For many years, it was place ...

great barracuda ''Sphyraena barracuda'', commonly known as the great barracuda, is a species of barracuda: large, predatory ray-finned fish found in subtropical oceans around the world. Distribution and habitat The great barracuda is present in tropical to warm ...

narrow-barred Spanish mackerel The narrow-barred Spanish mackerel (''Scomberomorus commerson'') is a mackerel of the family Scombridae found in a wide-ranging area in Southeast Asia, but as far west as the east coast of Africa and from the Middle East and along the northern coa ...

cobia The cobia (''Rachycentron canadum'') is a species of carangiform marine fish, the only extant representative of the genus ''Rachycentron'' and the family Rachycentridae. Other common names include black kingfish, black salmon, ling, lemonfis ...

mahi-mahi The mahi-mahi () or common dolphinfish (''Coryphaena hippurus'') is a surface-dwelling ray-finned fish found in off-shore temperate, tropical, and subtropical waters worldwide. Also widely called dorado (not to be confused with '' Salminus b ...

skipjack tuna The skipjack tuna (''Katsuwonus pelamis'') is a medium-sized perciform fish in the tuna family, Scombridae. It is otherwise known as the balaya (Sri Lanka), bakulan/kayu (North Borneo), tongkol/aya (Malay Peninsula/Indonesia), aku (Hawaii), caka ...

, angel fish,

sea urchin Sea urchins () are spiny, globular echinoderms in the class Echinoidea. About 950 species of sea urchin live on the seabed of every ocean and inhabit every depth zone from the intertidal seashore down to . The spherical, hard shells (tests) o ...

sea fan Alcyonacea, or soft corals, are an order of corals. In addition to the fleshy soft corals, the order Alcyonacea now contains all species previously known as "gorgonian corals", that produce a more or less hard skeleton, though quite different ...

oyster Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but not ...

ray fish Batoidea is a superorder of cartilaginous fishes, commonly known as rays. They and their close relatives, the sharks, comprise the subclass Elasmobranchii. Rays are the largest group of cartilaginous fishes, with well over 600 species in 26 fami ...

and rare

green turtle The green sea turtle (''Chelonia mydas''), also known as the green turtle, black (sea) turtle or Pacific green turtle, is a species of large sea turtle of the family Cheloniidae. It is the only species in the genus ''Chelonia''. Its range exten ...

. The Pakistan Game Fishing Association (PGFA) holds national angling competitions near Charna. It is the presence of coral reefs around this island that attracts the number of big game fish around it. However, illegal net sizes used by fishing trawlers are destroying this natural treasure.

References

{{Karachi topics Uninhabited islands of Pakistan Islands of Sindh

Background

Wildlife

See also

References