Scientific Surveys

The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation conducts scientific surveys on coral reefs to determine the status, health, and resiliency of the coral reef ecosystem. At each site we study, we bring a full team of scientific divers to conduct these surveys to get the most scientifically accurate data possible. This helps governments, environmental managers, and local residents gain a better understanding of their coral reefs so they can make informed decisions on how to manage and protect them. Coral Reef Scientific Surveys

In order to get a complete picture of reef health scientists must survey the entire aquatic ecosystem, rather than look at just one plant or animal. At every reef we visit, we conduct three types of surveys: coral surveys, bottom or benthic surveys, and fish surveys.

Types of Scientific Surveys

CORAL SURVEY

The coral survey consists of recording the size, species, and health of every coral along a transect, allowing for an accurate assessment of the coral community on each reef.

BENTHIC SURVEY

The benthic survey involves noting what is on the bottom of the reef every few meters to determine how much space each organism takes up on the reef bottom.

FISH SURVEY

Fish surveys are conducted in a similar fashion, with divers logging the size, species, and number of all fish they see in front of them. This lets us know how healthy the fish community is and what types of fish are interacting with the reef.

We repeat all of these science surveys at several depths and at several sites as we move from island to island conducting our ocean research. Coral Surveys, Benthic Surveys, and Fish Surveys

After all of the data is collected and analyzed, we write it up and give it to the interested parties in every country that we visit. By conducting the same scientific surveys using the same methods on every dive we are able to compare our observations from one site to another. This lets us see the differences in reef health and resilience between sites, reefs, islands and even countries.

Related Publications:

2022

Ocean Decade unveils new set of endorsed Actions on all continents

By IOC-UNESCO World Oceans Day: June 8, 2022 UNESCO has announced the endorsement of 63 new endorsed Actions in the context of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030 (the ‘Ocean Decade’). The announcement adds to …
2021

Global Reef Expedition Final Report

The Global Reef Expedition Final Report summarizes the findings from our 10-year research mission to survey and map coral reefs across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans as well as the Red Sea. The Expedition involved hundreds of research scientists …
2020

Global Reef Expedition: Kingdom of Tonga Final Report

The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation embarked on the Global Reef Expedition—the largest coral reef survey and mapping expedition in history—to study the coral reef crisis on a global scale. As part of the 5-year expedition, an international team …
2019

Diversity and Structure of Parrotfish Assemblages across the Northern Great Barrier Reef

Published in Diversity, January 2019 By Garrett B. Johnson, Brett M. Taylor, William D. Robbins, Erik C. Franklin, Rob Toonen, Brian Bowen, and J. Howard Choat Abstract The structure and dynamics of coral reef environments vary across a range of spatial scales, with …

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Lau Seascape Initiative

July 6, 2023

The Lau Seascape Initiative (LSI) is a program that focuses on the conservation and protection of marine ecosystem resources in the Lau region of Fiji. With multiple stresses such as climate change and overharvesting of coastal fisheries, the Indigenous peoples of Lau, in conjunction with the NGO Conservation International, have joined together to create a roadmap for protecting Lau’s biodiversity and ecosystems while in tandem with promoting sustainable development solutions for the local stakeholders.

One of the goals of this program was to bring together scientists, traditional leaders, government officials, and the people of Lau for the LSI Planning Retreat. The retreat took place in early March of this year in Suva, Fiji’s capital city. I was asked by Conservation International to speak to the LSI group about past work conducted in Lau by The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF) as well our future work with our in-country conservation partner the Pacific Blue Foundation. The title of my presentation Reefs of Lau Province: Past, Present, and Future, explains local, regional, and global context for status of the Lau reefs and what new technologies and methods KSLOF is helping refine for sustainable coral reef management…

Ocean Decade unveils new set of endorsed Actions on all continents

June 8, 2022

By IOC-UNESCO World Oceans Day: June 8, 2022 UNESCO has announced the endorsement of 63 new endorsed Actions in the context of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030 (the ‘Ocean Decade’). The announcement adds to …

Corals in the Anthropocene

January 20, 2022

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.

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