It’s been two weeks since the Gambier portion of the Global Reef Expedition to French Polynesia ended. In less than two weeks, our science team will be heading back to French Polynesia to conduct research in Rangiroa. In the meantime,
The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation works on a global scale to improve our understanding of coral reef health and the ecological integrity of coral reef ecosystems. Pollution, coastal development, overfishing, climate change, disease, and predation can negatively impact
French Polynesia is a long way from my hometown of St. Albert in Alberta, Canada. For many of my students, coral reefs are an abstract concept. Fortunately, in my short time with the science team, I have acquired many amazing
When I arrived on the Golden Shadow on October 1st as part of the Coral Reef Educator on the Water program, I knew I would be participating in a very unique opportunity – to be able to witness firsthand the
When we entered the water for our first research dive at Wolf island, the first thing we saw were thousands upon thousands of fish. The fish were so numerous it made seeing the bottom difficult. Underneath the clouds of fish
If you took a quick look on Google Earth at the northern San Andres Archipelago, specifically at the three banks the team visited on this latest mission, you’d think they looked pretty similar. But we found instead that each has
Happily, some minds were in fact blown on today’s first dive. The groundtruthing team had promised they found an incredible reef and they did not lie. We were on the farthest side of the bank from where the Golden Shadow
Our afternoon dive today was more surreal than most. We were on the far side of the lagoon here exploring Bajo Nuevo’s corals and instead of a large, defined reef mound, we were wandering through what looked like a field
Over the past few decades there has been a rapid decline in the health of shallow water scleractinian corals (stony or hard corals). Simultaneously, there has been a steady increase in the number of coral diseases being reported. Many of
