In 2021, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation completed the Global Reef Expedition (GRE), the largest coral reef survey and mapping expedition ever conducted in the history of mankind. On this research mission, we circumnavigated the globe, conducted tens of thousands of underwater surveys, and produced maps of over 65,000 square kilometers of coral reefs—the largest collection of ground-truthed, high-resolution coral reef habitat maps ever made. The GRE’s treasure trove of scientific data was freely shared by a wide range of end-users, from marine managers to government officials to NGOs, and has been used to enact new conservation measures in several parts of the world.
HRH Prince Khaled bin Sultan formally announced the conclusion of the GRE at the IUCN World Conservation Congress. He chose to share the news at this prestigious conference, as it was where he first announced his intention to launch the Global Reef Expedition in 2008.
The GRE is one of the biggest accomplishments in the foundation’s history. It involved traveling over 53,000 km and spending over 20,000 hours underwater surveying the reefs to collect baseline data on the status of corals and reef fish around the world.
The GRE took place at a critical time, as the coral reef crisis continues to worsen. While the science team was conducting surveys, our education and outreach teams shared the foundation’s knowledge about coral reefs with community members, local and traditional leaders, teachers, and schoolchildren. They also created award-winning films to bring our research into people’s homes, and brought back valuable information to the scientists from the communities who relied on the coral reefs for their lives and livelihood. This collaborative effort allowed the foundation to have lasting impacts on the communities we worked with, helping us provide science-based conservation recommendations catered to the reefs we studied.
Global Reef Expedition Final Report
In announcing the completion of the Final Report, we published the Global Reef Expedition Final Report, which summarizes all of our findings from the Expedition. The report provides valuable baseline data on the status of the world’s reefs at a critical point in time and offers key insights into how to save coral reefs in a rapidly changing world.
