“Conserving the world's oceans and coastal ecosystems is a no-regrets strategy posing huge benefits for people and planet,” explains Carlos Duarte, KAUST’s leading marine ecologist. For three decades, Duarte has led research into “blue carbon” ecosystems that can help both mitigation and adaptation to climate change and that include coasts, sandy beaches, mangroves, kelp forests, salt marshes and seagrasses.

High levels of dissolved calcium carbonate present in their bedrock indicate that Red Sea mangroves are capable of removing more carbon than previously thought, KAUST researchers have found. The study's findings highlight the need to consider calcium carbonate dissolution in mangroves growing on carbonate platforms as an important carbon storage mechanism.

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Carlos M. Duarte as a KAUST Distinguished Professor effective December 1, 2020.

A paper detailing the marine spatial planning simulation that informed master planning of The Red Sea Project, the world's most ambitious tourism development, was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

Following a call by President Tony Chan for KAUST PIs to contribute through their research capabilities to alleviate the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts coordinated by Donal Bradley, KAUST vice president for research, and Pierre Magistretti, KAUST dean of the Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering division, mobilized a group of faculty to form the Rapid Research Response Team (R3T).

“There is no silver bullet for solving climate change—there’s no single solution that is going to meet the targets laid out by the Paris Agreement. So we need to stack a number of solutions. And each of them will have a contribution toward the goal,” says Professor Carlos Duarte.

An international study recently published in the journal Nature that was led by KAUST Professors of Marine Science Carlos Duarte and Susana Agustí lays out the roadmap of actions required for the planet's marine life to recover to full abundance by 2050.

The project brings together the world's leading marine scientists working across four continents, in 10 countries and from 16 universities, including KAUST, Aarhus University, MIT, Colorado State University, Boston University, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Sorbonne Université, James Cook University, The University of Queensland, Dalhousie University and the University of York.

A range of information is collated through a simple framework that will help marine scientists to design more accurate experiments that will better help them understand the projected impact of global warming on marine life.

On February 4, the University announced that Carlos M. Duarte, KAUST professor of marine science and the Tarek Ahmed Juffali research chair in Red Sea ecology, received a Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Ecology and Conservation Biology from BBVA Foundation in Spain.

Giant clams take up a large fraction of marine microplastics, which could help explain the mystery of the plastic that is "missing" from the Red Sea. Researchers at the Red Sea Research Center have shown previously that the Red Sea has relatively low amounts of floating plastic debris in its surface waters, yet the reason for this has remained elusive.

Prof. Carlos M. Duarte has been awarded the 2019 Premi Ramon Margalef d’Ecologia. The jury of this award, the most important given by the Generalitat of Catalonia together with the Premi Internacional Catalunya, has decided that the prize goes to this oceanographer, born in Portugal but of Spanish nationality, for his discoveries and scientific advances.

An international team of over 150 scientists from 26 countries have collated movement data from nearly 2,000 sharks tracked with satellite transmitter tags. The groundbreaking study, published in the journal Nature reports, revealed that even the remotest parts of the ocean appear to offer highly migratory sharks little refuge from industrialised fishing fleets. The researchers, part of the marine megafauna movement, brought together by Carlos Duarte, Professor of Marine Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) mapped shark positions and revealed 'hotspots' of space use in unprecedented detail.

Mangrove forests on the coasts of Saudi Arabia act as litter traps, accumulating plastic debris from the marine environment, according to new research from KAUST. The study offers an explanation for the fate of missing marine plastic litter and highlights the threat it poses to coastal ecosystems.

CONVENOR: Prof. Carlos Duarte
CO-CONVENOR: Mr. Francis Juanes
DATE: January 30, 2019
TIME: 3 pm – 5 pm
LOCATION: Auditorium (level 0) between Buildings 2 & 3

Combining music and movement is not unusual—but translating the movements of migrating marine animals into musical notes certainly is. An international research team including KAUST scientists have created a sound symphony using data charting the movements of northern elephant seals in the Pacific Ocean. This sonification technique provides surprising insights into group dynamics and synchronicity. “Many studies have analyzed single-animal tracks, but collective movement is rarely addressed,” says Carlos Duarte from KAUST, who led the project in collaboration with colleagues including Madhu Srinivasan from KAUST’s Visualization Core Lab, and scientists in the United States.

A whale and a turtle differ in size, shape and lifestyle but their patterns of movement are surprisingly similar, reveals the largest collection of movement data for a diverse group of large marine vertebrates. A team of 58 researchers from nine countries and 45 research institutions has collated a satellite telemetry dataset for a diverse set of large marine megafauna: it includes more than 2.8 million locations from more than 2,600 tracked individual animals. And for some species it includes data from as long ago as 1985.

Carlos Duarte was named the first recipient of the Carlo Heip Award for outstanding accomplishments in marine biodiversity science. Duarte will receive the award at the Carlo Heip Award ceremony, which will take place on May 15 in Montreal, Canada.

KAUST Professor/Director of the Red Sea Research Center, Carlos Duarte, and his student Cecilia Martin were part of a team that measured the amount of plastic debris in the Red Sea during sea voyages in 2016-2017. They found that the quantity of plastic in the Red Sea was quite low, which they attribute to there being no consistent inflow from a river and to plastics collecting in corals and mangroves.

Prof. Carlos M. Duarte, Red Sea Research Center Director, has been included in the "Highly Cited 2017" list, which identified the the world's most impactful scientific researchers. Prof. Duarte has been included in all editions of the list to-date.

“Quantifying the effects of exotic species on marine ecosystems” is a Ahmed Juffali Research Chair workshop to be run at KAUST from April 30th to May 4th, with Drs Catherine Lovelock, Nuria Marba, Just Cebrian, Paulina Martinetto, Scott Bennett and Julia Santana-Garzon as guest scientists.