Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation
Providing science-based solutions to protect and restore ocean health
It is with great pleasure and excitement that we announce the release of the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation’s 2023 Annual Report. This report encapsulates the dedication, hard work, and remarkable achievements of our foundation over the past year …
As we gather around tables laden with delicious treats and cherished company, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation extends warm wishes to you and your family for a bountiful and joyful Thanksgiving celebration.
This Thanksgiving, as we express gratitude for the blessings in our lives, let us take a moment to give thanks to our ocean. The ocean sustains us in immeasurable ways, from providing us with food and resources to capturing our hearts with its breathtaking beauty.
At the Living Oceans Foundation, we hold a deep reverence for the ocean and understand the importance of safeguarding its delicate balance. Our commitment to marine conservation, scientific research, and education is fueled by a deep connection we have with the ocean that sustains life on our planet.
This Thanksgiving, we give thanks for the vibrant coral reefs that adorn our oceans. These diverse ecosystems not only dazzle the eye but also provide shelter to an astonishing array of marine life.
We express gratitude for the ocean’s biodiversity, from the graceful whales that swim across entire ocean basins to the tiny plankton that form the foundation of the marine food web. Each species contributes to the intricate web of life in the ocean, enriching our world with their existence.
We are thankful for the tireless efforts of scientists, researchers, conservationists, and volunteers who dedicate their lives to understanding and protecting our oceans. Their unwavering commitment is what gives us hope for the ocean’s future.
Last but not least, we are grateful for the lessons the ocean teaches us—lessons of resilience, interconnectedness, and the important role our health plays in our lives. These lessons serve as guiding beacons, urging us to cherish and protect our precious marine environments.
As we celebrate this Thanksgiving, we hope your hearts will be filled with appreciation for our ocean’s treasures. Together, let us strive to be stewards of the seas, ensuring that the wonders we admire today endure for generations to come.
From the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation family to yours, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Earth Day! Today, we celebrate the beauty and wonder of our planet, and renew our commitment to protecting it for future generations. At the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, we are dedicated to preserving the health of our …
Thank you to everyone who applied to our 2023 Science Without Borders® Challenge! We are captivated and inspired with the artwork that we received for this year’s contest, “The Sixth Extinction.” The students’ artwork drew attention to a wide range …
The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation has achieved a great deal in the past year, due in no small part to our ability to capitalize on the data and expertise we gathered on the Global Reef Expedition (GRE) — …
We are excited to announce that our Science Without Borders® Challenge is now open! This annual art contest inspires students from all over the world to be creative while learning about important ocean science and conservation issues. Last year, we asked educators and their students who participated in the contest for ocean conservation theme suggestions. There was one theme that repeatedly occurred in their answers – endangered species. We also think that this is an important topic to learn about, so for this year’s competition, we have selected the theme, “The Sixth Extinction.”
We are proud to announce that a project proposed by the Khaled Bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Science Without Borders®: Conserving the Tropics, was endorsed by the United Nations as an official Ocean Decade Action. This prestigious endorsement from the Executive Secretary of …
This Earth Day, we invite you to celebrate the blue heart of our planet: our oceans. The oceans produce half the oxygen we breathe, regulate our climate, sequester vast amounts of carbon, and even control the weather. The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation focuses on ocean conservation because we want to protect, preserve, and restore the health of our planet’s blue heart— our living oceans.
In 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, USA caught fire. Not a boat on the river, or something in the water — the water itself had so much flammable waste dumped into it that it quite literally caught fire, garnering the attention of the entire nation. That same year….
This week, the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP26 is taking place in Glasgow, United Kingdom. This conference will bring together world leaders so they can address global climate policy and action, and assess the progress made to address climate change that was promised in previous years. The decisions made at this meeting could have lasting consequences for marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, that are particularly sensitive to climate change.
The primary goals of COP26 are to secure global net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century and to adapt policies to protect communities and natural habitats. Net-zero carbon emissions does not mean no carbon will be released, but that any carbon emitted will be offset by other actions taken to remove it from the atmosphere.
Certain coastal marine ecosystems, such as mangrove forests, seagrass beds, and salt marshes, are particularly good at sequestering carbon by pulling it out of the air and storing it underground. Protecting and restoring these ecosystems (as we do in our Mangrove Education & Restoration Program) can not only conserve the marine environment, it can also help combat climate change. These ecosystems can also help coastal communities naturally adapt to other impacts of climate change by protecting the coast from storms, reducing erosion, and helping the shoreline keep up with sea level rise.
To better understand the plight of coral reefs, The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF) launched the Global Reef Expedition (GRE), a 10-year research mission that circumnavigated the globe to address the coral reef crisis. And while the GRE trek covered over 53,000 km, perhaps the most impressive number is the hundreds of scientists, community leaders, government officials, educators, documentary filmmakers, and photographers who surveyed, mapped, and documented over 1,000 reefs in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean as well as the Red Sea.
The GRE also embodied the philosophy of Science Without Borders. In each country we were invited to work in, we brought an international team of scientists together with local leaders, conservationists, government officials, and subject matter experts to assess the state of the reefs. These local representatives provided invaluable knowledge and helped us share our findings with local communities. This philosophy allowed us to leverage the resources, commitment, and ideas necessary to make substantial progress to protect and preserve coral reefs.
