On our Global Reef Expedition mission to French Polynesia, we had the chance to study many remote coral reefs, some of which had never been surveyed by scientists before. But of all the reefs we surveyed in French Polynesia, the
The Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation is proud to release our findings from the largest coral reef survey and mapping expedition ever conducted in French Polynesia. The Global Reef Expedition: French Polynesia Final Report provides a comprehensive summary of the
Spotting new fish species that you’ve never seen before and can’t put a name to is one of the many exciting and fulfilling aspects of being a fish surveyor with The Living Oceans Foundation’s Global Reef Expedition. This latest expedition
After 10 days of torrential downpours, low visibility, murky water, and heavy surge, the sun has finally returned. Our Mangareva work has been highly productive, and we’ve been fortunate to find some protection within the lagoon, but it’s been cold,
A fish sandwich? Think again. You may want to leave the fish on the reef, if you live in Mangareva. There’s a good chance it may be ciguateric and you may get ciguatera poisoning. Ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP) is seafood
Mangareva contains more diverse coral habitats than anything we have seen to date. Parts of the outside rim of the atoll are emergent. The cross sectional profile starts with a classic reef flat, 10 m wide in places and often
Cauliflower coral, in the genus Pocillopora, are among the most widely distributed and most abundant corals found on the fore reef. These branching corals are covered with small bumps (called verrucae), which contain corallites and help in the identification of
After a 3.5 hour flight on the Golden Eye, we reached Hao to begin our third research mission in French Polynesia at Gambier. Hao is a large (56 km X 15 km), low-lying coral atoll at the southeastern end of
