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Meet the Team – Tonga Education

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Expedition Log: Tonga – Day 2 This is my third year coming to Tonga to wrap up a coral reef education program, and I’m excited to be back in the “friendly islands.” We started our pilot coral reef education program …

Sharks Take a Bite

Back in the summer of 2013, while conducting the Global Reef Expedition mission to French Polynesia, a team of cinematographers and researchers from Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation were documenting shark feeding without the use of bait or other attractants. This article …

Chagos Study Shows Coral Reefs Resilient To Warming Events

A recent Chagos study shows that substantial reef recovery is possible after large-scale warming events. This article by Climate Progress cites Living Oceans Foundation’s recent Global Reef Expedition mission to BIOT relative to the study and their significance with respect to recent …

Tonga Time – Third Time’s a Charm

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Expedition Log: Tonga – Day 1 Malo e lelei! This means hello in Tongan. I’m very happy to announce that I just arrived in the Kingdom of Tonga. This island nation consists of over 170 islands and it is located …

COTS Control, Collection, and Conservation

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 18 Over a short three-week period, our team of four scientists collected over 7,500 crown of thorns starfish (COTS) from three locations off North Malé Atoll and South Malé Atoll in the Maldives. While this …

Securing the Survival of Anantara’s reefs

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 17 Our third area of research in the Maldives involved recent outbreaks of COTS reported from South Malé Atoll near Anantara Dhigu and Veli. Marine Biologists Marta Rigo and Alba had first observed starfish in the …

Sweetlips

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 16 The Sweetlips are a family of fish easily identified by their big, fleshy lips. The family is a large one with 120 species found around the world in tropical and temperate seas. Juvenile sweetlips …

Feathery Fossils

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 15 Often misidentified as a brittle star, yet plant-like in appearance, with long, flexible and highly contorted feathery arms, crinoids are the most ancient class of spiny skinned animals in the Phylum Echinodermata. Dating back …

Poisoning COTS or removal by hand?

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Expedition Log: Maldives – Day 14 Crown of thorns starfish (COTS) have undergone population explosions since at least the 1960s and scientists and managers have tried to control these outbreaks for just as long. The standard practice to control COTS …