Death by 1000 Cuts

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Worldwide, coral reefs are declining at an alarming rate.  This is most apparent in the Caribbean, where reefs have been transformed from coral gardens – 60-70% of the bottom was carpeted in thickets of elkhorn coral and staghorn coral, mountainous …

Something Fishy: Tongan Fishing Practices

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It’s 6am in Neiafu, Vava’u. We’re driving down to the wharf in the dark because at first light, local community fishing boats return from an evening of hard work offshore.  As another spectacular sunrise emerges from the low hills surrounding …

Working Together

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Over the past two weeks we’ve been meeting up with local leaders and fishers of the Vava’u island group in Tonga. The shallow-water reefs and lagoons surrounding the islands provide a vital source of protein for local people. The sharing …

Back in Tonga

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We are thrilled to send you this update! We’ve been pretty quiet over the last few months as we’ve been hunkered down crunching data from previous research expeditions. However, we’re in the field now and ready to send blogs and …

Crown of Thorns Starfish (COTS) Crisis

The venomous thorn-like spines that protect this crown of thorns starfish are the least of our problems – this species is destroying coral reefs in many parts of the world due to an imbalance in the oceans – find out …

New Caledonia Field Report

Between, 26 October, 2013 – 26 November, 2013, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation conducted a research mission to New Caledonia as part of the Global Reef Expedition. The research focused on coral reefs in four locations, Ile des …

Marine Habitats as a Component of Biodiversity

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Biodiversity is the diversity of life from genes to ecosystems. Somewhere between these two extremes are habitats. Habitats are, simply speaking, an area where flora and fauna settle, live, feed, reproduce and die. More formally, marine habitats can be defined …