2022 Science Without Borders® Challenge Semi-Finalists: 15-19 year old students

The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation is pleased to announce the semi-finalists in our 2022 Science Without Borders® Challenge! This international student art contest engages students in important ocean issues through art. For this year’s competition, students were asked to illustrate one or more of the ways people can use a ridge-to-reef approach to conservation to preserve coral reefs. 

Entries to the Science Without Borders® Challenge are judged in two categories based on age. Here are the semi-finalists selected from the older group of applicants, students 15-19 years old:

 

"An Embraced Home" by Kacy Chung, Age 17, California, United States of America

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From above ground to the depths of the coral reefs, human activities interconnect the plant community. My artwork illustrates how sustainable farming helps yield a pristine and uncluttered marine ecosystem in which the coral reefs can thrive in. Small actions such as replanting and monitoring the organisms on Earth's surface have valuable underlying impacts. Plants raised through sustainable farming resemble mangroves in eliminating erosion and deposits of unnecessary and harmful sediments into the water, thus the three-way amalgam between a sprouted tree, mangrove-like roots and coral reefs in the piece. As a result, the active coral reefs, which are now free of pollution, hospitalize and sustain a community of aquatic species. The interconnectedness between the land-based and aquatic plants identifies how "ridges to reefs" plays a role in preserving a robust ecosystem both in and out of the sea.