Red Sea Research Center

Introduction

Center Director

Vision

The Red Sea Research Center at KAUST will develop an integrated understanding of coral reef ecosystems and their oceanographic context - the physical, chemical, biological and geological environment, the stresses arising from natural as well as anthropogenic factors including overfishing, pollution, coastal development, and global climate change.

Mission

The primary focus of the Red Sea Research Center is developing a scientific basis for sustaining and conserving coral reef environments along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia.

 

Center Objectives and Approaches

Red Sea Diver The Red Sea, along its nearly 2,000-kilometer extent spanning almost 16 degrees of latitude, is a unique marine ecosystem with many diverse coral reefs and other species of fishes, invertebrates, seaweeds, phytoplankton, and bacteria, in markedly different environments that encompass a range of physical and chemical conditions. Comparisons of the coral reef ecology and associated oceanography among these environments, and throughout tropical regions of the Indo-Pacific oceans, may provide important insight into the survival and evolution of corals and other species associated with them, as well as a way to understand the dominating and characteristic processes influencing Red Sea coral reefs.

The rich array of diverse species existing in the Red Sea remains to be fully characterized and cataloged. This biodiversity holds enormous promise for chemists and others interested in exploring the relationships and interactions between corals and other species, and in developing new marine biotechnology applications, including the future discovery of new drugs, enzymes, and nutraceuticals from culturable marine microbes. Such studies will also impact our understanding of the marine toxins produced by phytoplankton such as dinoflagellates, which have been little studied in this area.

Other areas of active research include the observation and study of the modulation of small- to meso-scale hydrodynamic processes on temperature variability and distribution of pollutants, and coral reef connectivity, including dispersal and transport of chemical, biogeochemical, and biological quantities across individual reefs and along reef tracts.

The scientific basis for conservation of the coral reef habitat will include consideration of the maintenance of local and regional species diversity, effective management of fishing pressure, and the design and implementation of a network of marine protected areas. The Center will provide an integrated understanding of the coral reef ecology across scales ranging from molecular physiological processes to large scale oceanographic processes. These include: thermal modulation of molecular and physiological controls on coral growth and distribution, environmental effects on ecological processes that influence coral species abundance and distribution, and hydrodynamic processes that control the distribution and variability of temperature and other stressors.

Red Sea Diver Much of the Red Sea is unexplored with modern oceanographic tools, leaving many avenues for further research at the Center beyond the principal focused effort on coral reefs. The three-dimensional circulation of the Red Sea, its seasonal and inter-annual variability, and deep and intermediate water formation regions are not well understood. Little is known about the physical, geological and chemical environments, or the biota in the deeper parts of the Red Sea. There are likely to be deep-living coral communities and possibly active hydrothermal vents and their associated extremophilic organisms in the deep brine pools.

The Center will provide rapid and convenient access to the reefs in the vicinity of Thuwal where KAUST is located, as well as regions to the north and south. Diving facilities and small boats will be readily available to the Staff of the Center and access to larger vessels for research further from KAUST will also be available.

 

Multidisciplinary Areas of R&D Focus

KAUST also supports a diverse range of scientific and engineering interests and disciplines that will foster collaborations in fundamental biology, genetics, and informatics, to applied mathematics and large scale computing. Center Staff will have access to the cross-cutting facilities provided by KAUST for molecular genomics, plant genomics, computer simulation and visualization, environmental sustainability, chemical analysis, nano-fabrication, marine science, and oceanographic and geophysical modeling.

 

Leveraged International Research by Partnership

The research efforts currently supported by KAUST through its Global Research Partnership and Special Academic Partnerships are an important component of this Center and to a large extent form its core activities at present. Additional partnerships may be formed as we build and expand the expertise, interests, and capacity of this Center.

KAUST Academic Excellence Alliance

Academic Partnership

KAUST Global Research Partnership

Private Sector Collaboration

  • The Regional Organization for the Conservation of the Environment of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden (PERSGA)
  • Saudi Aramco
  • The National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, Egypt

Regionally-Relevant Focus Areas

  • The Red Sea Research Center will collaborate with the Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) at KAUST in the cataloguing of Red Sea biodiversity by DNA barcoding and environmental shotgun sequencing of microbial communities. These Centers will work to identify of toxins and other bioactive molecules (such as antimicrobial peptides) produced by organisms within the Red Sea ecosystem either with pharmaceutical potential, or potential to allow for the development of pharmacognosy.
  • The Red Sea Research Center anticipates building research collaborations with universities within the Kingdom, specifically King Abdulaziz University and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, as well as with other academic organizations in the Kingdom and in the countries surrounding the Red Sea.
  • The Center will seek partnerships and collaborations with regulatory and other organizations within the Kingdom that are responsible for environmental assessments and oversight in the Red Sea and its ecosystems.

 

Facilities and Equipment

The Center will provide state-of-the-art facilities for culturing coral reef organisms, and for dedicated geochemical analyses using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and isotope ratio monitoring mass spectrometry, as well as facilities for analysis of water chemistry. The Center will provide facilities for the construction, preparation, and deployment of modern oceanographic instrumentation. This instrumentation will include extensive use of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and cabled observatories for persistent sampling of the physical, chemical, and biological environment. The Center will be interested in developing instrumentation and sensors for these observational and monitoring programs.