Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation
Providing science-based solutions to protect and restore ocean health
New evidence suggests that reef sharks exert weak control over coral reef food webs Shark populations are dwindling worldwide, and scientists are concerned that the decline could trigger a cascade of impacts that hurt coral reefs. But a new paper published …
Published in Ecology Abstract Global overfishing of higher‐level predators has caused cascading effects to lower trophic levels in many marine ecosystems. On coral reefs, which support highly diverse food‐webs, the degree to which top‐down trophic cascades can occur remains equivocal. …
The Conversation December 14, 2018 By Anderson Mayfield Climate change threatens coral reefs around the globe. The high temperatures associated with this phenomenon can lead to “bleaching,” the breakdown of the symbiosis between corals and the algae that live within their cells. Since corals are nourished by these photosynthetically active algal …
During a month-long expedition in 2007, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF) conducted a comprehensive assessment of the coral reefs situated in the Ras Qisbah region of the northern Saudi Arabian Red Sea. Thirteen years later, KSLOF Chief Scientist Sam Purkis is embarking on a return mission to revisit this area and extend the mapping of the shallow-water reefs conducted by KSLOF into the abyssal depths of the Northern Red Sea.
For thousands of years, Palauans have practiced “bul,” which is a traditional method of ecosystem conservation. In this practice, coastal communities will close areas to fishing and prohibit access for a designated amount of time, though not indefinitely. This traditional practice has become the basis for a large network of marine protected areas (MPAs) in Palau. Most marine conservation efforts in Palau are led by individual states, which established their first internationally recognized marine conservation area as far back as the 1950s. Since then, many states have established MPAs and the national government of Palau has implemented large scale MPAs offshore, protecting 80% of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) from commercial fishing.
Congratulations to all of the students who have won the Science Without Borders® Challenge over the past ten years! We’re proud to showcase all of the first-place winners here — middle and high school students from around the world who …
The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF) would like to congratulate our science team for having one of the most popular papers in the prestigious journal, Coral Reefs. Last week the journal announced that our coral reef mapping paper, High-resolution habitat and bathymetry maps for 65,000 sq. km of Earth’s remotest coral reefs, was one of the top three most accessed articles published in the past 12 months.
“After spending five years surveying and mapping some of most remote coral reefs in the world on the Global Reef Expedition, it is heartening to see our years of hard work getting the attention it deserves in the scientific community,” said Alexandra Dempsey, KSLOF’s Director of Science Management and a co-author of the paper.
Our paper in Coral Reefs showed how we created high-resolution maps of coral reefs on the Global Reef Expedition using a combination of satellite data and field observations.
The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF) is pleased to announce our findings from the Global Reef Expedition mission to the Solomon Islands! Released today, the Global Reef Expedition: Solomon Islands Final Report summarizes what we found on a monumental research mission to study corals and reef fish in the Solomon Islands and provides recommendations on how to preserve these precious ecosystems into the future.
Reflecting on the past year, we have certainly had more challenges and hardships with our Mangrove Education and Restoration Programs than ever before. Mother nature was unquestionably the main perpetrator of a string of events that caused interruptions and setbacks …
