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RSRC NEWSLETTER ISSUE 8

summer 2019

Â© Tane Sinclair - Taylor

CONTENTS Message from the director Saudi Arabia produces remotely operated vehicle pilots to navigate new seas FaCULTY FOCUS: pROF. Daniele daffonchio PROF. CARLOS DUARTE Awarded Cataloniaâ€™ Highest Honor in Ecology Spilling the story of oil in the Arabian Gulf Industrialised Fishing Overlaps Threaten Shark Hotspots Worldwide Seaweed sinks deep, taking carbon with it UPCOMING EVENTS NEW FACES AT RSRC upcoming VISITORS

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR

PROF. MICHAEL BERUMEN Dear all, Welcome to the latest edition of the RSRC Newsletter. As KAUST celebrates turning 10 years old, it has been a good opportunity to reflect on the Center’s accomplishments and growth over the same time. The RSRC has been as dynamic as the whole university. Below you can see a pictures from what is now the RSRC taken just before KAUST’s opening in the fall of 2009. We’ve come a long way since then!

RSRC lab, circa summer 2009

Building 2 lobby, circa summer 2009

In August, we formally kicked off the new academic year. This semester, we welcome a new cohort of graduate students as well as some new staff (see page 13). The RSRC continues its engagements with major developments in the Kingdom. Earlier this month, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with The Red Sea Development Company (TRSDC), creating many new opportunities for collaboration and other engagements with this exciting Vision 2030 Giga-Project. KAUST intends to help TRSDC develop research station infrastructure at their site in the Al Wajh lagoon area. At the same time, KAUST continues to build on its strong ties with NEOM. Most recently, two of the research boats from the Coastal and Marine Resources Core Lab were sent up to the northern Red Sea to assist with an event at NEOM. In exchange, NEOM is facilitating access for several KAUST researchers to take advantage of the temporary relocation of these boats. We hope to see the benefits of some productive collaborations in the near future. Amid all the growth and exciting developments, we also have some very sad news to share. Noura Zahran, a former PhD student in the RSRC, passed away earlier this month after a long battle with cancer. Noura was very much a part of the RSRC family, sharing her endless energy and enthusiasm within the RSRC and beyond. Whether it was on the soccer pitch or in the dragon boats, Noura was always prepared to get involved. Noura was always ready to lend a hand with outreach activities, and she touched the lives of dozens of students from Thuwal. We will miss her very much. In addition to being a valued member of our RSRC family, Noura was also very much engaged in the broader KAUST community. Stay tuned for updates on memorial services that are being planned around campus. Sincerely, Michael

3 | Message from the Director

The CoE not only provides ROV training, but it also gives KAUST researchers access to the latest in marine survey technologies while giving Fugro access to cutting-edge research. The technologies allow KAUST to collect data and samples from previously inaccessible Red Sea sites. “Robotics is the new frontier and it is changing the landscape of marine science,” stated Haitham Aljehdali, supervisor of Marine Operations at the KAUST Coastal & Marine Resources Core Lab (CMR). “That’s why we need more students and staff to be exposed to this new technology.”

Lina Eyouni, Ph.D. Student KAUST marine science Ph.D. student Lina Eyouni is the first Saudi female to qualify as a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) pilot. She took part in the first Fugro ROV training held at KAUST in November and December 2018.

SAUDI ARABIA PRODUCES REMOTELY OPERATED VEHICLE PILOTS TO NAVIGATE NEW SEAS The first Fugro remotely operated vehicle (ROV) training program in Saudi Arabia was delivered from November to December 2018 on the KAUST campus through the KAUST-Fugro Center of Excellence (CoE) for Marine Technology. Fugro’s ROV Academy is the only training program accepted by major oil and gas companies such as Saudi Aramco and BP. Having access to deep water ROVs and the best pilot training in the industry is unique to KAUST’s marine science students. KAUST marine science Ph.D. student Lina Eyouni participated in the program and is now the first Saudi female ROV pilot certified by Fugro in the region. “I’m interested in studying water circulation and how much the air-sea fluxes influence this circulation. I want to identify the characteristics of the water masses,” Eyouni explained.

According to Aljehdali, large tracts of the Red Sea remain unexplored due to extreme depths, temperature and salinity. Traditionally, oceanography is conducted by large vessels with many people conducting long, tedious and often dangerous sampling. With the advent of marine robotics, previously inaccessible site can be explored with less exposure to these dangers. Robotics—and specifically ROVs—have been a mainstay of the oil and gas industry for several years. Universities are often involved with the development of robotic technologies; however, it is not often that commercial-grade equipment and training are made available to students to pursue their marine science research. With a strong demand for ROV pilots, the ROV training course is expected to keep expanding and will have its training modified according to specific needs. It fills a niche that until now had not been serviced. “Marine science students are gaining industry training and experience usually reserved for oil and gas professionals, which allows them to not only conduct their research more efficiently but also gives them a broader employability upon graduation,” said Edward Lloyd Smith, director of CMOR. Eyouni sees the course as an important vehicle to prepare the next generation of Saudis for industry. “For me, the goal is to put the Kingdom within the framework of the ambitious aspirations of Vision 2030. I see the use of these kinds of vehicles from a research perspective—to protect the environment. I look forward to working with all of the potential environmental applications,” she noted. Based on her new experiences, Eyouni added, “Marine sciences are now my total passion.” - KAUST News | Read here.

Recent News | 4

FACULTY FOCUS:

PROF. DANIELE DAFFONCHIO - By David Murphy

Daniele Daffonchio is a professor of Bioscience in the KAUST Red Sea Research Center. The Italian native joined KAUST in 2014 as an environmental microbiologist. Daffonchio’s research interests at KAUST focus on the microbial ecology of complex ecosystems in conventional and extreme aquatic and terrestrial habitats. His research moves through the basic aspects of microbial ecology up to the application of synthetic ecology approaches to applied aspects for the environmental protection and sustainability of agriculture. Over a lengthy career, Daffonchio has developed research on the exploration and characterization of extreme marine and terrestrial environments, both pristine and polluted. In Italy, his original research was in the agro-food sector where he focused on microbes, especially wastewater treatment systems and anaerobic systems in particular. Before moving more in the direction of soil systems and the study of the agricultural system, including research devoted to the anaerobic digestion and methane production from agro-food wastewaters. “Indeed, if I have to make a retrospective analysis of my work, most of the systems I have used were indeed extreme, even the experimental reactors I used in the lab,” he said It was a conference on the snout beetle Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, more commonly known as the red palm weevil, that first brought Daffonchio to KAUST. Upon arriving on campus, he was instantly appreciative of the campus’s beauty and facilities. “I was invited here to a conference on the red palm weevil. Then I learned that there was a position opening here and I successfully applied.” It is the unique environment that surrounds the university and campus that he feels contributes to KAUST acting as “an open laboratory” for his type of research. “I can work on extreme marine systems, extreme land systems and I have the desert on one side where I can go easily. We also have this coastal ecosystem that is incredible, extremely beautiful.”

5 | Faculty Focus

“At KAUST you can see unique phenomena, you can see plants surviving where there is nothing, really nothing. You can find traces of animals, you can find unique and beautiful flora and fauna in the sea. Before KAUST, very few researchers had explored the Arabian desert and the Red Sea, but now we have this opportunity for research, and it is very exciting,” Daffonchio believes that the central thrust of his research is understanding the forces that determine the assembly of the microbial communities. His goal is to understand why in any given place, in any given drop of water, in any given gram of soil do we have a specific unique assembly of microbes. This research goal is Daffonchio’s attempt to help answer the central question in microbiology. “It is commonly said that we [as humans] are an organism in a nation of microbes. The world is made of microbes, and microbiology is essential for understanding the functioning of our planet, because microbes are regulating the global ecosystem. My approach to responding to this general question is, ‘okay I diversified the communities, I go to look to communities in the arid soil in the deep sea, in anaerobic reactors in, whatever is the source.’”

“Then by paralleling all these observations and coupling these with reconstructive experiments through the synthetic ecology. I can have a better view on what is the real diversity. So, in a few words, from the observational works in the field, in the different environments, I can then establish a collection of microbes in a culture that can then be assembled in a synthetic community to respond to a specific question. This is essentially what I am doing at KAUST,” he concluded. Daffonchio believes that his research, and that of his colleagues, can be of benefit to Saudi Arabia and its future. “Considering how delicate the environment and the ecosystem is here in Saudi Arabia, due to the extreme conditions, the desert ecosystem, the lack of water, the salinity of the seas, the continued high temperature for all these years, understanding these topics is, I think, extremely important.”

“The problem of Saudi Arabia is that the green color is lacking, except in the flag. But if you move inland, it is yellow, brownish. There is no green color. If you go to the coast and you look at Google Earth or these kinds of systems you can see that there is a strip of green color along the coast and this is the mangrove system. This strip of green is providing essential services to preserve the coastal fish stocks, for instance. “For example, to determine the rate of coastal erosion is extremely important and so is studying how the microbes contribute to the functioning of the mangrove ecosystem. With our research, we want to contribute to the Kingdom’s future sustainable ecological protection drives for the Red Sea and the country’s ecosystem at large.”

Faculty Focus | 6

A Professor of Marine Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has received the 2019 Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology from the Generalitat of Catalonia. The international jury of the Ramon Margalef Prize has distinguished Professor Carlos Duarte as a world leader in marine ecology and biological oceanography, for his research into ‘blue carbon.’ His findings have been adopted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and are considered a fundamental contribution to mitigate the effects of Global Warming on our planet. On receiving the award, Professor Duarte said, “I am deeply honored to have my research contributions and scientific discoveries in the fields of marine ecology and biological oceanography recognized by an award that celebrates my mentor, Prof. Ramon Margalef. I am grateful to my collaborators who helped to make these achievements possible and to KAUST’s Vice President of Research, Prof. Donal Bradley, along with colleagues in the KAUST Research Office, who prepared the highlights in my nomination.” The prize is one of the most significant awards granted by the Catalan administration in the field of ecology. The award will be presented by the President of the Generalitat, Quim Torra on November 18 of this year in Barcelona and includes an endowment of 80,000 euros. In the fifteenth edition of this award, the jury has valued Duarte as an “ecologist deeply committed to communicating scientific discoveries to a wider audience and emphasizing ocean solutions to some of the most important environmental problems of this century.”

7 | Awards

Among many scientific discoveries and advances, Professor Duarte has demonstrated the global importance of marine ecosystems in shallow water, as well as the significance of the “hidden forests of the biosphere” and its valuable ecosystems, such as its seagrasses that sequester large amounts of carbon. Underpinning his research Professor Duarte stresses that protection, maintenance and improvement are key to allowing the underwater environment to continue to flourish. Professor Duarte and his colleagues have shown that vegetated coastal ecosystems act as carbon sinks, and how carbon is buried in coastal sediments. He coined the discovery ‘blue carbon’ and it is becoming increasingly influential in climate change strategies and negotiations. He has also organized and directed the Malaspina Circumnavigation Expedition to assess the state of the world ocean, with the participation of more than 400 scientists from around the world who made key discoveries about the functioning and biodiversity of the dark ocean, in addition to providing data and unprecedented samples for further research. Professor Duarte continues his ground-breaking research in the Red Sea Research Center and Computational Bioscience Research Centers of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, where he is currently investigating carbon flow and genomics of marine ecosystems and the role of marine biota in biogeochemical flows. - KAUST News | Read here.

SPILLING THE STORY OF OIL IN THE ARABIAN GULF Marine sediments tell the history of an environment, including oil spills. By “reading” sediments from the past century, a research team has now determined how much oil hydrocarbon is accumulated in different vegetated coastal habitats of the Arabian Gulf and the significance of this for environmental management. In the early 1900s, the world’s second-largest and most productive oil resource was discovered in the Arabian Gulf. Today, the Gulf produces nearly half of the oil in the global market. In oilproducing areas, incidental spills, leakages and emissions are unavoidable. However, these spills have considerable impacts on surrounding marine habitats. The world’s largest spill took place here, during the Gulf War in 1991, with more than a million tons of crude spilling directly into Kuwait’s coastal waters. The history of pre- and post-oil in the Saudi Arabian Gulf coast was reconstructed by a team led by KAUST, in collaboration with King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and Saudi Aramco Environmental Initiatives. To do this, the team measured the concentration of petroleum hydrocarbons from sediments of three coastal vegetated blue-carbon habitats: mangrove, seagrass and saltmarsh. “Several petroleum hydrocarbons are harmful contaminants. Vegetative marine ecosystems are considered to be blue-carbon habitats because they bury large amounts of organic carbon. Thus, in areas with prolific oil-based activities, they may also sequester oil hydrocarbons,” explains Susana Agusti, oceanographer and project leader. The research team also investigated whether these three different habitats varied in their capacity to accumulate and store hydrocarbons and what factors might influence this. Twenty-five sediment cores were collected from the three blue-carbon habitats along a 400 kilometer stretch of the Saudi Arabian Gulf coastline, including the stretch of the coast that was severely affected by the 1991 oil spill. The age of the sediments was determined by measuring the concentrations of the radioactive isotope of lead (210Pb) in regular intervals along the length of each core. This created a library of time periods of sediment deposition that corresponded to sediment depth.

Ananya Ashok, Ph.D. Student As a member of Prof. Susana Agusti’s research group, Ananya is studying the impacts of pollution with emphasis on persistent pollutants from oil on coastal-marine environments and their biota. © 2019 Anastasia Khrenova

The analysis of a century of petroleum hydrocarbon concentrations, including several individual hydrocarbons recognized as priority pollutants, revealed that the story of oil in the Arabian Gulf was written in its coastal blue carbon sediments. “Clear peaks in oil concentration corresponded with major oil events in history, such as oil discovery and early exploitation in the 1930s, and also the Gulf War oil spill of 1991,” says Ananya Ashok, Ph.D. student and first author of the study. Analysis of the rate of accumulation of oil hydrocarbons at different time periods showed that there were increasingly rapid rates of oil burial in the blue-carbon habitats of the Arabian Gulf. The team also showed that rising sea levels are exposing habitats higher up the tidal zone to oil that is borne by currents. “These results indicate that blue-carbon ecosystems do more than sequester carbon and are important sinks for anthropogenic pollutants,” says Ashok, “And ecosystems are accumulating them at rates higher than ever before.” Nearly 60,000 tons of petroleum hydrocarbons remain buried in the sediments of the last 25 years alone, the study shows. “Now that we know that disturbance of the sediments may remobilize these harmful pollutants, it is vital that we conserve these blue-carbon habitats,” warns Agusti. - KAUST Discovery | Read here. Research Highlights | 8

INDUSTRIALISED FISHING OVERLAPS THREATEN SHARK HOTSPOTS WORLDWIDE 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.

9 | Research Highlights

“This research highlights the need and power of collaboration to better understand global conservation challenges in the open ocean,” says Carlos Duarte, co-author of the paper and Professor of Marine Science at KAUST. Large sharks inhabiting the open ocean account for over half of all identified shark catch globally in target fisheries or as bycatch. Regional declines in abundance of some populations such as shortfin mako shark – the fastest shark in the sea – have led to widespread calls for catch limits in the High Seas. But precisely where, in the vast expanse of the oceans, sharks aggregate and how much fishing takes place in those chosen habitats remains poorly known globally, even though it will be crucial to selecting sites to conserve sharks. “Using the combined data from dozens of researchers and many species of sharks, we are able to assemble a global view of shark movement patterns. Typically, these data are difficult to obtain and we miss ‘big picture’ information unless we work together,” says Michael Berumen, co-author of the paper and Professor of Marine Science at KAUST.

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Major high seas fishing activities are centered on ecologically important shark hotspots worldwide North Atlantic blue sharks and shortfin mako – the fastest shark in the sea – have on average 76% and 62% of their space use, respectively, overlapped by longlines each month Even internationally protected species such as great white and porbeagle sharks at risk Danger of accelerating decline in populations and disappearance of shark hotspots Results could provide a ‘blueprint’ for use in deciding where to place large-scale marine protected areas (MPAs)

Strikingly, they found 24% of the mean monthly space used by sharks globally falls under the footprint of pelagic longline fisheries. For commercially exploited sharks such as North Atlantic blue and shortfin makos sharks overlap was much higher, with on average 76% and 62% of their space use, respectively, overlapping with longlines each month. Even internationally protected species such as great white and porbeagle sharks had overlap values exceeding 50%. “Our results show major high seas fishing activities are currently centered on ecologically important shark hotspots worldwide” says Professor David Sims, co-author of the study as part of the Global Shark Movement Project based at the Marine Biological Association Laboratory in Plymouth, UK. Equally alarming was that shark hotspots showing high overlap with longline fishing were often also subjected to high fishing effort, a potential ‘double whammy’ for sharks that will result in higher catch rates and potentially accelerate declines in abundance. Given the high fishing effort in hotspots of many species for significant portions of the year, and the very few tracked hotspots free from exploitation, the study reveals exposure risk of sharks to fisheries in the high seas is spatially extensive – stretching across entire ocean-scale population ranges for some species. The team’s findings indicate large sharks – some of which are already endangered globally – face a future with limited spatial refuge from industrial longline fishing effort.

The international working group has explored new ‘big data’ analytics to better understand conservation challenges in the ocean. “By overlaying global maps of shark abundance and movement contributed by over 150 researchers worldwide and fishing vessel movement data retrieved from the Automatic Identification System vessels carry to report their position, we have produced a global map of risks to shark conservation from the fishing industry. This work will help to advance conservation of endangered marine life,” Duarte added. They found multi-species pelagic shark hotspots were mostly located in frontal zones, boundaries in the sea between different water masses that are highly productive and food-rich. They then calculated how much the hotspots were overlapped by global fleets of large, longline fishing vessels – the type of fishing gear that catches most pelagic sharks – with each vessel capable of deploying 100 km long lines bearing 1200 baited hooks on a daily basis.

The researchers propose that the detailed maps of shark hotspots and exposure to longline fishing effort they have produced can provide a ‘blueprint’ for use in deciding where to place large-scale marine protected areas (MPAs) aimed at conserving sharks, in addition to the need for strict quotas to reduce catches elsewhere. “Some of the shark hotspots we studied may not be there in as little as a few years’ time if management measures are not put in place now to conserve the sharks and the habitats on which they depend” Sims says. The research is published online in Nature on 24th July 2019.

- KAUST News | Read here.

Research Highlights | 10

SEAWEED SINKS DEEP, TAKING CARBON WITH IT

Alejandra Ortega, Ph.D. Student Alejandra inspects a piece of seaweed she discovered floating on KAUST’s shores of the Red Sea, where it had attached to mangrove roots.

Seaweed may be a quiet achiever when it comes to mitigation of greenhouse gases, with it now shown to travel far and deep beyond coastal areas and thus to play a key role in sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. Seaweed, or macroalgae, form the most extensive and productive vegetated coastal habitats. They colonize all latitudes and are efficient at capturing atmospheric CO2 and converting it into plant material. An international research team has reported that a diverse range of macroalgae species drifts as much as 5,000 kilometers beyond coastal areas. Around 70 percent of this seaweed, and therefore carbon, will sink to ocean depths below 1,000 meters, meaning that this captured carbon is unlikely to return to the atmosphere. “This finding has huge implications for how the global carbon dioxide budget is calculated,” says Ph.D. student, Alejandra Ortega, the first author of the study. “It indicates that macroalgae are important for carbon sequestration and should be included in assessments of carbon accumulated in the ocean, known as blue carbon.” Macroalgae are ignored in current assessments of blue carbon, mainly because these rootless marine plants do not remain in the same place but drift with currents and tides. Little was known about their fate once they have floated away from the coast.

As a result, there have been no detailed assessments of their role in carbon sequestration in coastal habitats, particularly in the sediments of seagrass and mangrove. The international team led by Carlos Duarte, including KAUST colleagues at the Red Sea Research Center and the Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), has identified DNA sequences of macroalgae in hundreds of metagenomes generated by the global ocean expeditions Tara Oceans and Malaspina, the latter led by Duarte. The expeditions surveyed the global ocean to a depth of 4,000 meters and sequenced the particulate material collected in the water sample to create a global DNA resource. The marine scientists searched for macroalgae in these global ocean metagenomes using Dragon Metagenomic Analysis Platform (DMAP). Developed by CBRC bioinformaticians, DMAP uses KAUST’s supercomputer to annotate and compare metagenomic data sets. For the very first time, the team was able to provide semiquantitative evidence of the presence of macroalgae beyond the shoreline. “Work is still needed to be able to translate a specific amount of DNA into a specific amount of organic carbon in a specific taxon, but finding macroalgal DNA is the first step,” says Ortega.

- KAUST Discovery | Read here. 11 | Research Highlights

Upcoming Events 14 OCTOBER

COLLOQUIUM

3 pm - 4:30 pm

UNDER 1,000 PAGES: UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESS AND APPROVAL OF AN IPCC REPORT LOCATION: Level 0 Auditorium between buildings 2 and 3

DR. ELVIRA S. POLOCZANSKA

Discussion with Dr. Elvira Poloczanska, science advisor to the Co-chairs and WGII Technical Support Unit, and one of the leading authors of the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and the Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, released on September 25, 2019.

Dr. Poloczanska will address questions from postdoc and students, aiming to help them understand the processes involved in producing and approving an IPCC report, and the various ways in which they could contribute to an IPCC report.

The Red Sea Research Center (RSRC) Open Science Conference 2019 is a student and postdoctoral fellow-led symposium exhibiting RSRC research and featuring international keynote speakers.

The talks will be punctuated by other exciting events: there will be a poster session and five keynote talks at the start of every session.

As during previous Open Science Conferences in 2017 and 2018, we aim to provide a friendly platform for all RSRC students, postdocs, research technicians and research scientists to showcase their work (at varying stages of completion and/or success). Published something interesting? Let us know! Stuck with an intractable problem? Perhaps a member of the audience can suggest new ideas!

The keynote speakers are luminaries in marine science and include: Prof. Camilo Mora, University of Hawaii, U.S.A. Dr. Maria Dornelas, University of St. Andrews, U.K. Prof. Paul Marshall, NEOM, Saudi Arabia Mr. Philippos Papageorgiou, National Fisheries Development Program, Saudi Arabia • Prof. Kyle Lauersen, Department of Bioscience, KAUST, Saudi Arabia • • • •