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Little Creatures with a Big Message: An Educator’s Guide

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Lately, you have been hearing from our partners at the University of Miami (UM) about their experiences processing and picking tiny foraminifera from sand samples that we collected on the Global Reef Expedition (GRE). As our colleagues continue to process the large quantity (2,500) of sand samples, we are creating an educator’s guide called “Little Creatures with a Big Message.”

Together, the University of Miami and the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to utilize microscopic organisms, called foraminifera (‘forams’ for short), to assess the state of coral reefs over the past 1,000 years, and potentially create new metrics that can be used to assess reef health.

NSF recognizes that a critical component to any research project is how it can benefit society. This is what NSF defines as the “Broader Impacts.” As a part of this grant, we will deliver on the broader impacts portion of the grant to educate and communicate this science to others. One of the ways will do this is by creating curriculum that improves STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education and increases participation of minorities in STEM.

The Protists Prophets: An Innovative Way to Unlock the Past, Present, and Future of Coral Reefs

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Coral reef ecosystems are rapidly declining due to numerous local and global pressures such as climate change and pollution. In response to the coral reef crisis, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Ocean Foundation (KSLOF) conducted the Global Reef Expedition (GRE) to assess the state of coral reefs in 16 countries around the world. The expedition helped generate extensive data collection including coral reef maps and benthic surveys and 2,500 sediment samples from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. After traveling more than 50,000 km conducting research, the GRE’s valuable data opens the curiosity to explore unconventional approaches to globally evaluate coral reef health.

Now, the Khaled Sultan Living Oceans Foundation and the University of Miami, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (UM-RSMAS) are working together on a new project called Protist Prophets. Run by Dr. Sam Purkis’s lab at RSMAS and funded by the National Science Foundation, this exciting project uses the sediment samples KSLOF collected on the GRE to evaluate global reef health using benthic foraminifers (forams) as markers of environmental changes and stressors. Our innovative scientific efforts will inform reef conservation strategies and develop non-traditional reef management techniques. Plus, we will assemble the Little Creature with a Big Message educational curriculum using the foram data to complement the foundation’s existing Coral Reef Ecology Curriculum available in the KSLOF Educational Portal.