Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation
Providing science-based solutions to protect and restore ocean health
For thousands of years, Tongan fishing used traditional outrigger canoes known as popao. With modern technology, it is rare to see these traditional fishing boats and it’s even rarer to see traditional fishing gear being used; however, there are still …
Does the idea of whales fasting sound strange to you? Read on to find out why they do… Humpback whales are a type of baleen whale. Baleen whales do not have teeth, instead they have baleen plates, which are made …
Traveling from dive spot to dive spot in Tonga it’s not difficult to find a misty cloud of water near the surface. We have arrived during Megaptera novaeangliae, humpback whale season. Why are there humpback whales near Tonga this time …
One of the most colorful and diverse groups of invertebrates found on coral reefs are soft corals (known scientifically as Alcyonaceans). These cnidarians are related to stony (scleractinian) corals, but they lack a massive, calcified skeleton and have eight hollow …
The Kingdom of Tonga contains some of the most unique and extensive coral reef environments found in the central south Pacific, with over 1500 square kilometers of reef area. These Tonga coral reefs are located due east of the 35,000 …
As the crew and science team watched from the M/Y Golden Shadow, a bigger, brighter moon filled the night sky rising above the island of Vanuabalavu on June 23, 2013. When the moon is closest to Earth, called perigee, it …
Fiji’s coral reefs house some 333 species of corals of all shapes, sizes and colors, many of which we’ve seen in Lau Province. We’ve examined many reef types, some which fringe the shore (fringing reefs), some in the center of …
In addition to a much larger variety of corals, reefs of Lau seem to have an unusually large number of fluorescent, brightly colored corals, more than we’ve seen in past expeditions. Corals are usually light or golden brown, but some …
Nominally herbivorous reef fish play a variety of functional roles that are important in maintaining coral reef resilience, yet are major targets of spear fisheries in Micronesia. Although protection is afforded to iconic species in some areas, impacts of the fishery on the …
Coral reefs worldwide, even remote reefs, are impacted by global change – a combined multitude of large-scale and local stressors. COTS impacts and bleaching are key drivers of coral degradation. This scientific article on coral population trajectories looks at increased …
