Features

Education & Outreach in the Solomon Islands

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In addition to science, education and outreach are important components of conservation. That is why on many of the missions of the Global Reef Expedition (GRE), we used a three-pronged approach: science, education, and outreach. While on the Solomon Islands Expedition, the education team provided land-based education seminars throughout the Western, Choiseul, Isabel, and Temotu Provinces at schools and communities.

These educational efforts were conducted in partnership with local Solomon’s representatives from the Government of the Solomon Islands, a local Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) called OceansWatch, and local cultural liaisons. During the mission, schools were either taking exams or on holiday break, so the majority of the seminars were provided to communities where men, women, and children attended the talks. Overall, the Foundation conducted 4 school and 25 community seminars and 4 ship tours reaching a total of 2,891 people. This was the greatest number of people reached on any of the GRE missions.

Marine biologist documents the impacts of climate change

University of Miami, News@TheU By Janette Neuwahl Tannen March 19, 2021   In his travels around the world to survey and map coral reefs, Sam Purkis, a professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, has witnessed firsthand …

Will fewer sharks impact the food web on the Great Barrier Reef?

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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 in Ecology suggests that the effects of shark losses are unlikely to reverberate throughout the marine …

Are reef corals stressed or just pessimistic?

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 …

Mapping the abyssal depths of the Northern Red Sea

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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.

Protecting Palau’s Reefs

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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.

Our coral reef mapping paper is one of the most popular articles in Coral Reefs this year

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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.