WHOI First Research Partner King Abdullah University

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution establish cooperative research and education program in marine sciences at KAUST's Red Sea campus in Saudi Arabia.  

KAUST is a new world-class graduate research university that is under development at a site along the Red Sea approximately 80 kilometers north of Jeddah. Set to open in September 2009, KAUST's aggressive global research program begins now with collaborative projects such as the WHOI initiative announced this summer. The University expects to conclude as many as four collaborations with leading institutions in other fields. A substantial grant program for individual investigators and centers around the world and a student scholarship program will be launched this summer.    

Among KAUST's four fields of research, ocean research is critical because the coastal campus includes 19 million square metres of protected marine sanctuary. The Memorandum of Understanding signed by WHOI and KAUST creates three initial areas of research at KAUST: coral reefs; coastal hydrography; and fisheries and aquaculture. WHOI also will provide consultation on the design of laboratory support, and dock facilities for the KAUST Marine and Ocean Research Center, which will provide opportunities for advanced research on Red Sea oceanography and marine life.

The goal of the proposed WHOI-KAUST three-year fisheries and aquaculture project will be to develop an integrated bioeconomic model of the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia that describes the dynamic relationships among fish stocks and the fisheries that harvest them. By tracing out the biological and economic effects of alternative fisheries policies, such a model provides support for resource managers. The proposed coastal hydrography and circulation project will establish a suite of observational and modeling activities that will provide the first comprehensive description of the physical oceanography in the Red Sea. This research also will support studies of coral reef ecology and provide a baseline for long-term monitoring of the coastal environment.