Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation
Providing science-based solutions to protect and restore ocean health
In 2018, we partnered with Alligator Head Foundation to implement our Jamaica Awareness of Mangroves in Nature (J.A.M.I.N.) program in Port Antonio, Jamaica. Through this program, we have educated teachers and youth about the mangrove ecosystem. Although this initiative has …
Aside from viewing at all the incredible art that we receive during the Science Without Borders® Challenge, one of my favorite tasks is getting to meet the contest winners and their families and teachers. This year I had the pleasure of getting …
The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation is thrilled to announce the winners of our annual student art competition, the Science Without Borders® Challenge. Every year, this international contest engages students in ocean conservation through art, encouraging them to create pieces that inspire people to preserve, protect, and restore the world’s oceans and aquatic resources.
The Foundation received entries to the Science Without Borders® Challenge from more countries than ever before. A total of 680 students from 63 countries sent in artwork illustrating this year’s theme, “The Magic of Mangroves.” This is the first time we received submissions from more than a dozen countries including Afghanistan, Kuwait, Maldives, Panama, Senegal, and Zambia. Mangrove forests are important marine ecosystems that protect the coast from storms, filter the water removing sediment and pollutants, sequester a surprising amount of carbon, and provide critical habitat for many species both above and below the waterline. The winning entries in each category are beautiful pieces of artwork as well as excellent illustrations of the benefits mangrove forests provide to people and the environment.
By all accounts, 2020 was an extremely successful year for the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF). It was certainly a challenging year, but also a productive one, primarily because we were able to adapt to changes imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although we were not able to travel to share our findings at international conferences or complete some of our Mangrove Education and Restoration programs, we published a record number of scientific reports from the Global Reef Expedition, and we were here to help teachers and students with the transition to remote learning.
The Chagos Archipelago is one of the most remote, seemingly idyllic places on Earth. Coconut-covered sandy beaches with incredible bird life rim tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles from any continent. Just below the waves, coral reefs stretch for miles along an underwater mountain chain.
It’s a paradise. At least it was before the heat wave.
The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation led a research mission to study reefs in the last great coral reef wilderness on Earth, traveling to the Chagos Archipelago in 2015 as part of the Global Reef Expedition. This scientific research mission circumnavigated the globe to address the coral reef crisis and gain a better understanding of the health and resiliency of coral reefs in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Over the course of two months at sea, scientists aboard the Global Reef Expedition conducted thousands of surveys of the benthic and reef fish communities at over 100 locations across the Chagos Archipelago. Only a handful of research missions have had the opportunity to explore the reefs of Chagos, and some of the reefs visited on the Expedition had never been surveyed by scientists before.
One priority for the Global Reef Expedition was to study reefs with minimal human disturbance, and there was no better place on Earth to do that than the Chagos Archipelago. Some estimates indicate these reefs could contain more than half of the healthy reefs remaining in the Indian Ocean. Because of its remote location and protected status, Chagos was the perfect place to explore global issues such as climate change and overfishing that threaten the long-term survival of coral reefs. By studying these relatively pristine reefs, the scientists wanted to add to their knowledge about the coral reef crisis, and were eager to see how coral reefs could thrive without the impacts of these other major disturbances.
Happy Earth Day!
This year for Earth Day, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation is asking you to pledge to learn more about the threats to ocean health. The world is, after all, a Blue Planet.
One way you can do this is by watching documentary films that educate you about critical ocean issues and inspire you to take action. We have selected a few of our favorites below that are currently streaming, one for each day of Earth Week. These films address the biggest threats to our ocean—such as overfishing, climate change, and pollution—but they also showcase what is being done to save them. We encourage you to pick one of these films to watch tonight in celebration of Earth Day.
Happy Earth Week! One of the ways we are celebrating Earth Week this year is by announcing the Science Without Borders® Challenge finalists. Each year we choose an ocean conservation theme to encourage students and teachers to learn about different important ocean topics. Our goal is for students to not only learn about the theme through art, but also create artwork that inspires others to want to learn about it too.
The theme for this year’s art contest was “The Magic of Mangroves.” Students were asked to learn about the importance of mangroves, that are not only essential to the wellbeing of the planet, but also are an essential resource for humans too. Based off responses from our student surveys, many learned a great deal about mangroves and came to appreciate them. Here is what some of our participants said:
In addition to science, education and outreach are important components of conservation. That is why on many of the missions of the Global Reef Expedition (GRE), we used a three-pronged approach: science, education, and outreach. While on the Solomon Islands Expedition, the education team provided land-based education seminars throughout the Western, Choiseul, Isabel, and Temotu Provinces at schools and communities.
These educational efforts were conducted in partnership with local Solomon’s representatives from the Government of the Solomon Islands, a local Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) called OceansWatch, and local cultural liaisons. During the mission, schools were either taking exams or on holiday break, so the majority of the seminars were provided to communities where men, women, and children attended the talks. Overall, the Foundation conducted 4 school and 25 community seminars and 4 ship tours reaching a total of 2,891 people. This was the greatest number of people reached on any of the GRE missions.
Having first visited the Chagos Archipelago in 2006, it was an immense pleasure to return with the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation under the auspices of the Global Reef Expedition. Returning to the archipelago offered the chance to continue work that had been initiated nearly a decade earlier by other scientists—monitoring of the fish assemblages and health of the coral—but also begin new science initiatives.
Following the discovery of a rich portfolio of vintage aerial photographs for the Chagos Archipelago taken in 1963, we are examining the dynamics of the coastlines of the many islands in the archipelago in an effort to understand how low-lying atoll islands respond to rising sea level. Largely uninhabited, Chagos is one of very few places in the world where the behavior of islands can be tracked in the absence of artificial coastline modifications. That is, “natural” island behavior can be quantified.