2008 Annual Report of the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation
The year 2008 was a period of impressive growth and visibility for the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation. By far, the most exciting development this past year was the formal announcement by Prince Khaled bin Sultan during the World Conservation Congress of our upcoming multi-year program titled Global Reef Expedition: Science Without Borders®. This ambitious program will begin in 2010 at which time we will commence our global circumnavigation on the capable research ship, Golden Shadow. We anticipate that the program will conclude at the end of 2012. Throughout the coming three years, the Foundation will map and survey coral reef ecosystems around the world with the objectives of advancing scientific knowledge and promoting conservation management activities. This program will institutionalize the Foundation’s overarching vision of Science Without Borders® through the power of collaboration between international, regional, and local scientists who share the common goal of protecting the world’s majestic coral reefs.
Our operational highlight in 2008 was the successful completion of the third Red Sea expedition to survey and map the coral reef ecosystems of the Saudi Arabian coastline. This research project was the most complex of the series and took place north of Jeddah along the Yanbu Barrier Reef system and at the Al Wajh Bank. This was our first expedition employing both multispectral satellite and airborne hyperspectral imagery technologies. We have one more major expedition to complete this effort and will return to the Saudi coastline in April 2009 to survey a rich coral ecosystem south of Jeddah known as the Farasan Banks. In October 2009, we will conduct an international symposium in Jeddah to release our initial results of this four-year program and receive “stakeholder” feedback so that we may develop the most useful conservation management products.
Another operational highlight this past year was the creation of an online Bahamas Geographic Information System (GIS) resulting from the 2007 biodiversity study with our very capable partners at the Marine Spatial Ecology Laboratory (University of Exeter, UK). This excellent marine conservation tool is in the testing stage now and we anticipate this product will be made available for free public access in July 2009.
Please take some time to review this Annual Report. I am confident that you will agree that the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation is on-stride towards attaining meaningful impact on the challenge of marine conservation, education, and outreach.
