Aqaba mission 2022, Day 1 has started

Among the various scientific programs to be conducted over the next days on different sites along the coast of Jordan: Seascape genomics, a study of coral reef population structure, dynamics, and adaptive potential; Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding, a novel approach to estimate coral species assemblages; assessing the metabolic response to thermal stress, to increase our knowledge about fundamental cellular metabolism; assessing the impact of plastic and trace-metal pollution on corals, and scalable 3D-mapping of shallow coral reefs with machine learning.

This mission conducted with the support of the Jordanian authorities and the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs represents a key milestone along the road aiming to establish the first ever Red Sea-wide coral ecosystem and biodiversity ‘baseline’.