The Orange (Or Brown?) Spotted Grouper: Dying Out? Introduction to a Series

A Hamour/Orange spotted grouper seen at a special buffet at Doha's lively W Hotel. 

In a previous life, I'd written this article on the tribulations of trying to continue a traditional life of troll fishing (not to be confused with either "trawl fishing" or "internet trolling") in Qatari waters. The article found at the link above is a very different beast from what I'd intended when I set out--the structure and the aims of the story changed considerably over the summer of 2013. What I want to get at over a series of posts on the catching of the orange spotted grouper in Qatari waters, interspersed with other posts, is the data/statistics side to the story. 

Anybody who has ever had two good meals in the Gulf knows the glory that is the hamour: it is the Cod of the Gulf, a non-fishy fish for people who don't like the taste of the sea but want its nutrient goodness. Like other groupers, its meaty, white flesh has that feeling of creamy decadence more easily found in a burger. The problem is, just like cod were at one point, they're dying out.   

Hamour brought ashore by Qatari fishing boats in tons, 2004 to 2010. Source: Qatari Ministry of Environment. 

Nobody will ever admit to that, but the data from 2004 to 2010, and published by Qatar's Ministry of Environment do not lie. Unlike the hapless fishermen I profiled for Qulture, commercial fishing boats registered in Qatar have actually become more efficient: a decreasing average number of fishermen per boat (see later posts) have been reeling in huge catches, using (fairly crude) mesh-wire traps laid in the reefs which the hamour love. As the chart above shows, in fact, they've caught so many that there might not be enough left for the future. 

Why they did this is clear. During the period from 2004 to 2010 shown above, the population of Qatar nearly doubled. Unlike countries where the population growth is natural, Qatar's population was buoyed by droves of expatriates, at all pay levels, coming to town. 

One of the first things they'd want to do after getting here is to have a hamour dinner. The pressure on the population has a seemingly straightforward correlation with the price of the prized hamour ... 

The price of hamour continues to rise, even as the catch has peaked.  Source: Qatari Ministry of Environment. 

The story gets a little more complicated though. The next post in this series is going to look at the complicated nomenclature of the groupers found in the Gulf. Just as a taster: the next time you order a hamour at a restaurant, make sure it's not soman they're giving you. 

A Humble Blog with Great Ambitions: Introducing Notes from Doha

This is a blog which I am going to use to document what are (mostly) stories about quantification and statistics in Qatar, and in particular its capital city of Doha.

Why here? Why now? Qatar is at the cutting edge of global capitalism in the 21st century. In addition, it is also a very well documented country, in terms of the data available on a variety of topics. Making sense of these, however, can be difficult.

Qatar and filling stations

Rabia Zaman alerted me to this story on the Peninsula, about plans to build an additional 150 petrol stations in Qatar over the next four to five years: http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/news/qatar/288869/150-new-petrol-stations-planned-for-fifa-2022

A striking fact mentioned in the article was that there were only 23 currently functioning petrol ("gas") stations in Qatar, all of them operated by Woqod, the country-wide monopoly. While complaints of "I never find a petrol station" are rarely (ever?) heard in Doha, the numbers do seem odd.
For starters, not all of the petrol stations could be found on Google Maps. The map of identifiable places I could locate on Google maps can be found here.  There is one petrol station still missing (any assistance in locating much appreciated).

Looking at the map above, the petrol stations not only seem to be few, they are incredibly closely packed into a very small area of the country. You can see that almost all of them are in the capital Doha, which accounts for just over 1% of the landmass (Qatar has a total area of about 11,600 square kilometers, so comparable in size to Lebanon).


The real question though is to find out how often one drives in between petrol stations in Qatar. So, how many filling stations are there per km of road in Qatar, and how does that compare to other countries?

A cursory glance at wikipedia and the data taken from its lists of countries by road network size as well as the (very incomplete) information on the number of filling stations shows that Qatar doesn't compete well with industrialized countries:

Qatar	338.7
United Kingdom	46.7
Germany	45.1
Japan	30