Published: 11 June 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
IN A RACE TO save the colourful corals that dot the shores of the Red Sea, Israel has joined a unique regional collaboration along with seven other majority-Muslim countries, many of whom do not have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
The Red Sea Transnational Research Centre, to be managed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, will study the Red Sea’s vast coral reefs and how they have managed to resist bleaching effects that have led to the imminent collapse of other reefs around the world.
The alliance will include all the countries that border the Red Sea: Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Israel only has diplomatic relations with Jordan and Egypt.
The Swiss institute will act as a “neutral umbrella,” to oversee the research and liaison between the countries, according to Israeli researcher Professor Maoz Fine, a marine biologist from the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar-Ilan University.
FULL STORY Israel to ally with Arab neighbours around Red Sea in bid to save world’s corals (Times of Israel)
Photo: The Red Sea Transnational Research Centre will study thousands of types of fish like these (courtesy Maoz Fine)
