Thirteen years after our original expedition to the Red Sea, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation participated in a joint six-week expedition mounted between NEOM and OceanX to survey deep-water reefs and ecosystems in the Ras Qisbah region of the northern Saudi Arabian Red Sea. KSLOF Chief Scientist Sam Purkis joined the research mission to extend our mapping of the shallow-water reefs into the abyssal depths of the Northern Red Sea.
The expedition was conducted aboard OceanXplorer, a research vessel furnished with state-of-the-art tools for seabed mapping, including a pair of custom Triton manned submersibles and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The unique capacity of OceanXplorer combined with the uncharted deeps of the Northern Red Sea led to new discoveries and revealed the intricacies of reef building offshore.
A short film about the expedition, which prominently features our Chief Scientist and his research in the Red Sea, was shown at the G20 meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia:
