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Palau

In January 2015, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation embarked on a research mission to Palau. As part of the Foundation’s Global Reef Expedition, this research mission conducted standardized surveys of coral reefs and reef fish in many locations across Palau, including the Rock Islands Southern Lagoon, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Our core science team was joined by representatives from the Palau International Coral Research Center (PICRC), the Coral Reef Research Foundation, and the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP).

On this research mission, we collected detailed information about the health and state of the reefs. The team of scientists conducted hundreds of benthic and reef fish surveys, focusing on commercially important reef fishes and invertebrates, such as groupers, sea cucumbers, and crustaceans. The scientists also noted the health of these reef communities and any stressors that could affect them, like the coral-eating Crown of Thorns Seastars, coral diseases, or ocean acidification. In addition, the scientists assessed the damage caused in 2013 by Super Typhoon Haiyan.

Palau’s Rock Islands

On this research mission, we put special emphasis on collecting images of some of these threats to coral reefs as well as documenting life on the reef. K eith Ellenbogen, a photographer with iLCP, joined us for the Global Reef Expedition’s mission to Palau and shares his best photos and tales of his adventure in an article in National Geographic Voices.

Our research, based on extensive underwater surveys, found Palau’s reefs had the highest live coral cover of all the reefs studied on the Living Ocean Foundation’s Global Reef Expedition. Overall, Palau’s reefs were in very good condition, but even here, where so much has been done to conserve Palau’s marine ecosystems, signs of overfishing were observed on nearshore reefs, particularly those near population centers.

The Global Reef Expedition: The Republic of Palau Final Report summarizes the foundation’s research on the status of coral reefs and reef fish in Palau and provides conservation recommendations that can help preserve these outstanding coral reefs for generations to come. It has been shared with local communities, government and non-government agencies, and relevant stakeholders in the region. This information can directly help with the ongoing management and conservation efforts to protect, preserve, and restore Palau’s coral reefs.

Global Reef Expedition: The Kingdom of Palau Final Report

The Global Reef Expedition: The Republic of Palau Final Report presents the Foundation’s findings from the Global Reef Expedition mission to Palau in 2015, along with recommendations that can help preserve the reefs into the future.

Global Reef Expedition Final Report: Palau (4 MB PDF)

Meet the team

* By TUBS [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

$Pair of Baba\'s Crinoid Squat Lobsters (Allogalathea babai) hiding in the center of a crinoid.$

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All Updates

Celebrating Traditional Marine Management Practices Across the Pacific Islands

October 14, 2024

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we recognize the invaluable contributions that Indigenous communities have made to marine conservation worldwide. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Pacific Islands, where for millennia, communities have practiced sustainable marine management through traditional systems such as kapu in Polynesia, tabu in Fiji, bul in Micronesia, and ra’ui in the Cook Islands. These ancient practices reflect a deep understanding of the environment and a commitment to protecting marine resources for future generations.

Coral Reefs in the South Pacific: A Webinar with SPREP

August 25, 2022

The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation recently hosted a webinar with our partners at the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP). SPREP is an organization established by the governments of Pacific Island nations to protect and manage the environment and natural resources of the Pacific. Their 21 member states (including many we studied on the Global Reef Expedition) work together to achieve healthy and resilient ecosystems and support sustainable development for Pacific communities. Our webinar with SPREP allowed us to share our research findings from the South Pacific directly with people who are actively working to conserve coral reefs and coastal marine ecosystems in the region. This is one of the many ways we are sharing our knowledge and findings from the Global Reef Expedition with the countries and communities in which we worked.

During the webinar, we were able to share information about the work the Foundation completed on the Expedition, including our extensive outreach and education initatives, as well as our scientific findings. We highlighted the programs our education team developed over the course of the Expedition, the many outreach events we held, and provided a comprehensive discussion of the results of our research in the South Pacific as well as our work in the Indian Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

At the end of the presentation, we were able to share our ongoing partnerships and upcoming projects, including our ongoing partnership with the University of Miami to develop a reef resilience model, our partnership with NASA to map the world’s reefs, as well as our numerous education programs such as the Mangrove Education & Restoration Program, Coral Reef Ecology Curriculum, and Science Without Borders® Challenge. Lastly, we shared information about our endorsed UN Ocean Decade Project, Science Without Borders®: Conserving the Tropics, which will use science, outreach, and education to engage local communities to protect their coral reefs, mangrove forests, and seagrass meadows. This project will allow us to build off of our work on the Global Reef Expedition using a co-designed approach to further conservation of tropical coastal marine ecosystems, such as those in the South Pacific.

The webinar was attended by numerous government officials, marine managers, and stakeholders from throughout the South Pacific. Some of the attendees were people we had worked with on the Global Reef Expedition, but many were new and this webinar was a great introduction to the Foundation and our work. There was a great Q&A session at the end where we were able to discuss the findings and share more information about future partnerships.

As we take the work from the Global Reef Expedition to the next level, we are always looking to develop new partnerships to help bring the UN endorsed Science Without Borders® project to communities worldwide. Webinars like this, and partnering with SPREP, are important first steps in the implementation of the Science Without Borders® project and connect us with a network of people who are also working to protect, conserve, and restore ocean health.

What We Learned: Marine Protected Areas Work in Conserving Coral Reefs

December 14, 2021

Managing marine resources is a challenge for communities around the globe. On the Global Reef Expedition, we had the opportunity to visit protected and unprotected reefs in both remote locations and those regularly used by humans. The degree of protection varied, but we found that areas with the highest protection had the healthiest reefs.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a tool commonly used by governments and communities to manage their marine resources. An MPA can have varying degrees of regulations, including no-take and no-entry where no fishing is allowed and entrance into the park is not permitted, to varying permitted use that regulate the fishing and use practices. Some of the countries we visited, such as Australia (Northern Great Barrier Reef), Palau, and New Caledonia have large human populations utilizing the reefs and have prioritized establishing large protected and managed areas to conserve their nearshore reef systems.

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