Sinai and The Ras Mohammed Marine National Park
Since 2003 the Marine Sciences group has been working within the Ras Mohammed marine National Park, Sinai, to identify the current status and threats to coral reefs within the region. Importantly, although numerous monitoring programmes had been previous established, limited long term data sets are available. The research therefore aimed at producing biological performance criteria which could be rapidly and readily assessed, cost effectively, whilst reporting data resolute enough so short terms changes could be detected. Apart from an extremely large tourist industry the reefs of the Ras Mohammed Marine National Park were also heavily impacted by a Crown of Thorns starfish outbreak. It is quite possible the outbreak coupled with tourism pressure would have a double negative impact on the reefs of this very important region. Consequently the research being carried out aims to:
1. Identify biological performance criteria, the data for which can be rapidly obtained but is still resolute enough to identify short term changes in coral biodiversity and reef integrity
2. Identify whether the pressures of tourism and Crown of Thorns Starfish outbreaks combine to negatively impact reefs by reducing recovery pressure
3. Integrate studies of the functional ecology of Red Sea reefs with other data sets collected from the Western Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and from the Western Atlantic Ocean: is functionality similar across broad regional scales?
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