Al Futaisi

Al Futaisi (الفطيسي) is an island about 8 km southwest of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates with a size of approximately 50 km2.

The largest part of the island, which is 10 km long and 5 km wide, is covered by a wildlife sanctuary but also a resort for ecotourism was built on Futaisi.

The discovery of old water catchments showed that the original settlement of Futaisi dates back several hundred years. Although the island does currently not have any fresh water, it supports a diverse flora and fauna with Dugong, Osprey, lizards (Uromastyx) and Gazelles.

Futaisi is not connected to the mainland by bridges but has a small airport and a boat dock.

A special sign of the owner of the island, Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, was the construction of a waterway formed by Latin letters in the south of the island "at °N, °W", which produced the word 'HAMAD'. The individual letters were almost 500 m long, the channel width was 44 m and the total width of the word extended over 1700 m which allowed the word to be read from air or satellite images like Google Maps. The project was abandoned and the waterway filled in by 2012.