Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation
Providing science-based solutions to protect and restore ocean health
Forams as bioindicators of coral reef health The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF) is working with our partners at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science on a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project called “Protist Prophets …
Using Machine Learning to Automate Benthic Transect Image Analysis The Living Oceans Foundation is working with the Pacific Blue Foundation and the University of California San Diego’s CoralNet cloud-based tools to automate the analysis of images from coral reef photo transects. These …
Exploring Coral Reefs in Virtual Reality The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation worked with scientists at the University of Miami to create virtual reality (VR) field trips to accompany our Coral Reef Ecology Curriculum. This allows students anywhere to learn about coral …
“There’s a shark on the line!” The young ladies from Black Girls Dive Foundation (BGDF) squirmed with anticipation and giggled with excitement. As their chaperone, I could feel my own adrenaline surging as we watched the University of Miami (UM) team scurrying around at the back of the boat. The chaperones fitted the first four students with gloves and life vests. Then the students lined up in single file to begin their assigned individual and group tasks. It was time to get to work.
In December, I had the honor of being asked to join our partners at Black Girls Dive Foundation on a shark tagging expedition with the UM Professor Neil Hammerschlag’s Shark Research and Conservation team at Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmosphere Science. The trip is part of BGDF’s Science, Technology, Robotics, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics with SCUBA (STREAMS) program, which is designed to introduce black girls between the ages of 9 and 17 to a multitude of activities. The Shark Research and Conservation Capstone is a component of the STREAMS program that teaches about the behavioral ecology and conservation of sharks. After completing a series of lecture and lab activities, this part of the program culminates with a field-intensive research expedition: shark tagging.
This guest blog comes from a former KSLOF fellow, Dr. Anderson Mayfield, who joined the foundation on many of our Global Reef Expedition research missions in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. A former student of the renowned coral biologist Dr. Ruth Gates, Dr. Mayfield studies coral health and physiology at NOAA’s AOML Coral Program and at the University of Miami’s Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies. He continues to publish scientific papers based on data collected on the Global Reef Expedition, including his latest paper, recently published in the journal Oceans.
As a naïve post-doctoral researcher back in 2012, I had an idea that was surely far from novel at the time: corals of far-flung, uninhabited atolls are in better shape than those closer to major human population centers. The logic was that these corals would be under global-scale stressors only (namely those associated with climate change), and not the threats that instead plague reefs close to cities (such as pollution and overfishing).
As a fellow with the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation during their Global Reef Expedition (GRE), I tested this hypothesis by sampling corals from among the most seemingly pristine islands and atolls in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Although we certainly observed beautiful reefs with high coral cover (see image above) and diversity as well as a plethora of fish —all the visible hallmarks marine biologists look for in ‘healthy’ reefs—the corals themselves told a different story (Mayfield et al., 2017); high cellular stress levels were documented in the vast majority of the many hundreds of corals sampled across the GRE.
Despite looking healthy, the corals were struggling to survive.
These high stress levels do not, in and of themselves, imply that all such sampled corals are not long for this Earth. They do signify, however, that we likely never visited ‘pristine’ reefs during the GRE, despite studying some of the most remote coral reefs on the planet. This is a testament to the wide reach of climate change. This statement may come as a surprise to some, who, like me, assumed that somewhere out there, one might find corals entirely untouched by humankind, but this unfortunately does not appear to be the case.
Our Chief Scientist, Dr. Sam Purkis, will be giving a virtual lecture on January 18th at 7pm ET entitled “Beauty and Peril in the Red Sea.”
Dr. Purkis has joined the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation on many research missions, including several to the Red Sea. We hope you take this opportunity to hear more about his work and learn about the remarkable diversity and resiliency of coral reefs in the Red Sea.
As 2021 comes to a close, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation is taking some time to reflect on everything we have accomplished this year.
Despite the restrictions imposed by the ongoing pandemic, we have had quite a few things to celebrate. This year we entered into a partnership with NASA to map the world’s reefs, concluded our 10-year Global Reef Expedition, and published a final report of our findings. We also presented our research at two major international conferences: the IUCN World Conservation Congress and the International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS), released a report of our research in the Chagos Archipelago, and published several peer-reviewed scientific papers.
Our education and outreach departments also had a remarkable year. This year we launched a new mangrove conservation program with our partners in Jamaica and had students from over 60 countries submit artwork to our Science Without Borders Challenge. Last but certainly not least, we produced an excellent TV show on ocean health, “Our Living Oceans,” which is now playing on EarthxTV.
It’s been an incredible year, and we look forward to the work we will accomplish next year to help protect, preserve, and restore our living oceans.
Managing marine resources is a challenge for communities around the globe. On the Global Reef Expedition, we had the opportunity to visit protected and unprotected reefs in both remote locations and those regularly used by humans. The degree of protection varied, but we found that areas with the highest protection had the healthiest reefs.
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a tool commonly used by governments and communities to manage their marine resources. An MPA can have varying degrees of regulations, including no-take and no-entry where no fishing is allowed and entrance into the park is not permitted, to varying permitted use that regulate the fishing and use practices. Some of the countries we visited, such as Australia (Northern Great Barrier Reef), Palau, and New Caledonia have large human populations utilizing the reefs and have prioritized establishing large protected and managed areas to conserve their nearshore reef systems.
Published in Frontiers in Marine Science Abstract Empirical methods for estimating shallow-water bathymetry using passive multispectral satellite imagery are robust and globally applicable, in theory, but they require copious local measurements of water depth for algorithm calibration. Such calibration data have …
Throughout the Global Reef Expedition, the Living Oceans Foundation observed signs of declining ocean health and its impact on coral reefs and coastal marine ecosystems. What are the biggest threats to our ocean, and what can be done to protect it?
Find out in the 4th episode of Our Living Oceans, now playing on EarthxTV!
Tune in to hear from experts from the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation and our fellow scientists and conservation leaders working around the world to protect and restore ocean health.
This episode features many scientists and partners who joined us on the Global Reef Expedition, as well as renowned marine scientists Dr. Daniel Pauly, Dr. Ben Halpern, and Dr. Nancy Knowlton. In this episode, you will also hear from celebrated deep-sea explorer, Her Deepness Dr. Sylvia Earle, about her hopes for the future of our ocean.
Watch Our Living Oceans online or on the EarthxTV app today, and discover the hidden life within our living oceans.
