This October, two exciting events for the KAUST community will take us into the ever-changing and always moving world of marine organisms, helping us to learn more about sharks, whales, dolphins and other large animals that populate the Red Sea and the world’s oceans.

The KAUST Marine Megafauna Movement Workshop (October 19-20) will feature eminent international speakers who will showcase the latest research on how new sensors, analytics and visualization tools are helping to reveal the collective behavior of large marine animals.

Inspired by the workshop and the work of KAUST’s Red Sea Research Center (RSRC), Enrichment in the Fall 2015 (October 16-24) will focus on the theme of the movement of large marine animals, and will feature keynote lectures, aquarium and port trips, marine-themed movies, a musical performance and many other events for the entire KAUST community.

Marine Megafauna Movement Workshop organizer Professor Carlos Duarte and Marie-Laure Boulot, Head of Enrichment Programs, sat down with KAUST News to talk about Enrichment in the Fall and the Marine Megafauna Movement Workshop.

They discussed ongoing efforts to conserve and protect marine wildlife, new tracking technologies for marine species and what we humans can learn from marine animals and their movements.

Describe how the collaboration between your two groups came together.

CD: Large marine animals have always been fascinating to a wide audience, so we capitalized on this for our collaboration. For example, in our community, a popular yearly activity is swimming with the whale sharks in the Red Sea.

At KAUST, we have the opportunity to take a lead role in better understanding the movements of animals in the ocean. One of the elements we bring to the workshop and the enrichment program is that we are merging two communities that have been conducting research in movement. One of these is working on large marine animals, and we’re bringing to campus some of the top researchers who have been tracking animals for decades. The other community works in a new field, the field of human mobility. By combining these communities, we hope to gain new understanding about how large animals move in the ocean and, based on this work, also learn more about human mobility.

How will Enrichment in the Fall and the Marine Megafauna Workshop highlight how KAUST works to conserve marine organisms and the marine ecosystem?

MLB: Sustainability, conservation and preservation are main concerns of ours, as these issues are important for not only the entire KAUST community, but also for the global community. Our events will help raise the awareness of everyone in the community about ocean animals’ movements and how to conserve marine organisms. The oceans cover 70% of our planet, and we want to preserve and conserve them to protect the planet’s ecology. This is how we hope to educate our students, faculty, staff and community here at KAUST, and also spread this education to the entire Kingdom.

CD: In our projects, we want to use marine animals as our allies – we want to learn about the ocean through them by learning more about how they experience the oceans. The effort to conserve marine animals should be embraced at an international level, and the Kingdom and KAUST can play an important role because the ecology of the Red Sea is still relatively pristine.

Is this a new initiative in the Kingdom?

CD: In Saudi Arabia, there has been very limited research outside of KAUST into the movement of large marine animals. We are drawing from the few people in the Kingdom who are doing this kind of research. Saudi Aramco has had research centered around animal tracking programs, so there will be some delegates from Aramco attending the conference to tell us how they are helping to conserve these animals. Outside of KAUST, most of the research efforts in this area have come from Aramco.

Who are some of your other KAUST collaborators for this initiative and for Enrichment in the Fall?

CD: We are also collaborating with the Visualization Lab to make a tracking system available to The KAUST School students and the KAUST community so they can track marine animals on Google Earth and build their own narratives of the animals’ journeys. Through this, they will be able to “adopt” and follow an animal, sharing in our fascination about how these animals move through the ocean.

MLB: We will also collaborate with the Library for Enrichment in the Fall; there, we will create an exhibition space for the duration of the program. We will also host our opening night event there, and a special marine-themed Sci-Café event will take place there, as well.

If you could sum up your hopes for the achievements of Enrichment in the Fall, what would you say?

CD: We hope to educate the KAUST community on the threatened status of most marine animals. The health of the global oceans is very complex, but when marine animals are doing poorly, so are the oceans. All marine life is victim to pollution, including pollution with plastic and noise, overfishing and the use of fishing nets and collisions and disturbances from marine industrial operations. For example, the Kingdom produces much plastic that ends up in the Red Sea. There is a lot that can be done here in terms of educating about pollution and public outreach in this area.

MLB: I would be very happy if just one community member – perhaps the next time he or she went diving or snorkeling – could take note of the marine environment and the creatures we share it with. I hope that same person might develop a greater sense of conservation and a bigger picture of the unique beauty of nature and the intelligence of the animal kingdom.

For more information about Enrichment in the Fall 2015, visit fep.kaust.edu.sa.

The Megafauna workshop is organized by Carlos M. Duarte and Xiangliang Zhang, with financial support from the KAUST Office of Sponsored Research.

- By David Murphy, KAUST News