JEDDAH: The first official scientific trip to study the Red Sea's topography from the Poseidon, a world-class research ship, was launched Tuesday at Jeddah Islamic Port by Osama Al-Tayyeb, President of King Abdulaziz University, and Peter M. Herzig, Director and CEO of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science at the University of Kiel, in Germany. The two-month trip is part of the scientific partnership between the universities, said Al-Tayyeb. “This program will enable our students and academic personnel to make environmental studies of the Red Sea's coastline from the north to the south,” he said. “We have already done many research studies in cooperation with universities in France, but this project is the biggest one to be done by universities in the Kingdom.” The results will help companies and scientists who use and study the sea-lanes, he added. The project was launched after lengthy discussions, Herzig said. “We have spent eight months to study and sign the contract between the institutions,” he said. “We are very happy to implement the project. The Red Sea is unique and contains many geographical secrets that we hope to reveal.” He added that the project will strengthen the educational relationship between the two countries. Saudi and German scientists will focus on a 120-km swath of sea floor extending from the central Red Sea rift axis to coastal waters off Jeddah, officials said. The Poseidon has been used all over the world for scientific studies and its full complement of advanced equipment is such that it is often booked for many years in advance, Matthias Gunther, the ship's captain, told Saudi Gazette. “It contains a special system to collect samples from the column 12 meters below the Red Sea floor,” he said. He added that it costs about SR3.5 million to operate the ship for two months. The research will add to work done decades ago, said Dr. Warner Bruckman, head of Applied R&D Projects at Leibniz Institute of Marine Science. “This area was studied 40 years ago so this will be a good chance for scientists to update the previous studies and add new information,” he said. He added that the scientists from the two universities will do geophysical studies in deep parts of the Red Sea before they return to Jeddah and then conduct biological expeditions. “We brought the most modern equipment to study microbiology on the surface and in the depths of the Red Sea,” he said. Dr. Ali Al-Aidaroos, Dean of the Marine Science College at KAU, said that over the course of the project, researchers there will establish a special control room to store and analyze samples taken from the Red Sea, design a website to publish the studies' results and conduct workshops in cooperation with Kiel University.
