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Taking a Global Approach

A school of blue-green chromis swim in colony of coral in the Farasan Banks off Saudi Arabia. An international team of scientists, including WHOI biologist Simon Thorrold, conducted a rapid ecological survey of corals and coral reef fishes there in 2009 as part of WHOI’s cooperative research program with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Thorrold is currently part of an ambitious, WHOI-led effort to study a very different kind of ecosystem: the ocean twilight zone, a vast region 200 to 1,000 meters below the ocean’s surface. The research initiative, led by WHOI biologist Heidi Sosik, is being funded by a $35 million award from the Audacious Project. (Photo by Simon Thorrold, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)