Expedition
Bab el-Mandeb Strait, mission accomplished
The Transnational Red Sea Center at Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne has just successfully carried out a new coral mission in the Djiboutian waters of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in close collaboration with two of its regional partners: the Université de Djibouti, the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche de Djibouti (CERD) and the Red Sea University in Port Sudan.
On the EPFL side, the team of twelve researchers also included six scientists from the Biological Geochemistry Laboratory (Prof Anders Meibom) and the Environmental Computational Science and Earth Observation Laboratory (Prof Devis Tuia).
In the Seven Brothers archipelago, between Djibouti and Yemen, the aim of the mission was to characterise the state of the reefs at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, their capacity to adapt to global warming as well as their level of anthropogenic pollution. The mission complemented the data collected in the Gulf of Tadjourah in September 2022 during an initial mission to Djibouti.
The team was also accompanied by film-maker Fabiano D'Amato and photographers Ulrika Larsson and Lukasz Larsson Warzecha, who are working respectively on a documentary project and a photo exhibition in Geneva next year.
Thanks to the Djiboutian authorities, the embassy of Switzerland to Djibouti - and Département fédéral des affaires étrangères DFAE - for their support.
The video trailer of the mission is in the pipeline and will soon be available, so stay tuned for even more material that will make you feel the thrill of the mission as if you were on board.
