Goals & Objectives
There were seven main Goals of our work:
1. Complete habitat maps for the Farasan Banks, south of Jeddah.
2. Characterize the population structure of key food fishes (e.g., groupers and snappers), ornamental (aquarium) fishes, and major functional groups (e.g., herbivores and corallivores).
3. Photographic documentation of benthic communities
4. Characterize coral community structure
5. Identify factors conferring ecological resilience in coral reef ecosystems, and how they vary within habitat types and across large spatial scales.
6. Collect coral tissue samples. We will characterize the health of corals and the types of diseases affecting these corals using visual observations of tissue loss, and tissue samples for microscopic (histological) examination.
7. Characterize deep reef environments
The specific objectives for each of these goals were:
Goal 1: Habitat Mapping.
We acquired Quickbird multi-spectral Satellite Imagery for the region and completed in-situ ground-truthing efforts to allow supervised classification of the habitats. Data collected to support map development included acoustic bathymetry, sediment profiling and tethered video camera assessments of habitat features.
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Multispectral satellite image of Ras Qisbah showing groundtruthing tracks |
Low resolution picture of the resulting habitat map for Ras Qisbah |
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Profile of the video camera used for groundtruthing. The camera was deployed from a small boat and “flown” above the substrate. |
| Goal 2: Characterize fish community structure
Using belt transects, divers recorded the numbers and size structure of key reef species along the same transects used by the benthic team. |
A commercially important reef fish (humphead wrasse) observed in one of our study sites in the Red Sea |
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A diver assessing reef building corals in the Red Sea |
Goal 3: Characterize coral community structure.
Our work included a detailed assessment of the diversity, abundance and size structure of stony corals, the prevalence of coral recruits and colony condition (health). Because of the large number of species, and prevalence of small colonies, corals were recorded only to genus and colonies are lumped into six size classes. A species list was also developed for each site and representative photographs of the different species are compiled. |
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Goal 4: Photographic documentation of benthic communities. The team completed benthic phototransects along three depth gradients (5, 10 and 15 m depth). The images were be analyzed on the Golden Shadow to determine specific information on corals such as coral cover, species diversity and size structure and prevalence of disease and predation. We also determined the cover of other major groups (algae and other sessile invertebrates). Photographic records are permanently archived and linked to GIS database and habitat maps. |
A typical 0.5 m photograph of the bottom taken along a phototransect. Each frame included a reference bar for scale. |
Goal 5: Resilience assessments.
We recorded a variety of parameters that may affect the health and persistence of the community, such as human interactions (e.g. fishing pressure), environmental conditions (temperature, water clarity, light levels, currents, physical exposure, upwelling), structural attributes of the habitat (amount of relief, largest corals, degree of shading), and community attributes (coral cover, algal cover, abundance of keystone invertebrates, plankton diversity).
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A degraded reef inside the Wajh Bank lagoon. Corals sustained high mortality, but the reef structure is still intact. The reef has a high amount of rugosity and shows some recovery |
A healthy reef from Wajh Bank that appears to exhibit a high degree of resilience, as evidenced by high coral cover, large colonies, and high relief reef structure
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A common coral disease (white syndrome) on Goniastrea observed during our May 2008 Red Sea surveys Disease sampling core: A colony of star coral with disease that was sampled using a coring tool. The tissue sample is taken at the interface between healthy tissue and recently dead, exposed skeleton.
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Goal 6: Collect coral tissue samples. We characterized the health of corals and the types of diseases affecting these corals using visual observations of tissue loss, and tissue samples for microscopic (histological) examination. |
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Goal 7: Characterize deep reef environments. We used our new Hydrobox and Stratabox acoustic profiler to characterize the bathymetry, sediment characteristics and surface features of the reef structure in deeper water, below diving depths. This has been supplemented with video collected using a small ROV. |
Our remotely operated vehicle (ROV) deployed in a shallow reef off the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. |
