3 Reef 0 and Reef 1

Reef 0

Reed the Reef 0 report here: Reef 0 Expedition Report

The Reef 0 Expedition (a joint venture between the University of Oxford and the Zoological Society of London) was borne out of a desire to assess the feasibility of using Diego Garcia (DG) as an ecologically-relevant base for British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) research.

Reef 1

Read the report from Reef 1 here: Chagos Expedition Report_reef trip 1_March 2020

The Bertarelli Programme for Marine Science (BPMS) Reef Expedition 1 in 2020 ran from March 12th to March 25th, but was severely impacted by the changing global travel constraints caused by the Covid-19 virus pandemic. The decision to go ahead with the expedition in the first place was not without its challenges, but at the time of the “go, no-go” decision, no travel restrictions to the region were being imposed by the relevant Institutions (except Stanford), and in the UK the FCO were not advising against travel to the Indian Ocean region. On top of this there was a very strong desire by all team members and the project PIs to try to make the Expedition happen (not least because of the importance of the Year 3 data to many projects and aligned PhD research).  The expedition participants came from Exeter University (UK), Lancaster University (UK), University of Oxford (UK), Australian Institute of Marine Science, and Stanford University (USA).