Fig 1.
Study area and distribution of survey effort.
Maps showing the study area (a, light green polygon) and the locations of survey effort, including: (b) aerial surveys (flight track in blue line and estimated survey swath in shaded blue polygon), (c) BRUV deployments and opportunistic sightings from vessels and snorkel, (d) SCUBA and manta tow surveys, and (e) ROV and submersible surveys. The number of surveys of each type are indicated as “n” in the top-right of each panel (for opportunistic sightings, n indicates the number of sightings). Green circles in (a) indicate restricted areas that were not accessible during surveys. The area covered by (b) is highlighted in (a) within the dashed blue rectangle. Base layer created in MapBox Studio (https://studio.mapbox.com) using freely available data from MapBox (hillshade and terrain data; can be found within the software) and Natural Earth (www.naturalearthdata.com; bathymetry and geopolitical contours).
Table 1.
Summary of effort for megafauna surveys in the north-eastern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba.
Table 2.
Summary of elasmobranch and Cheloniidae sightings in the north-eastern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba.
Fig 2.
Example images of marine megafauna sightings across the expedition.
Sightings including (left-to right, top to bottom): Green turtle (C. mydas), round ribbontail ray (T. meyeni), spotted guitarfish (R. punctifer), hawksbill turtle (E. imbricata), bentfin devilray (M. thurstoni), oceanic whitetip shark (C. longimanus), halavi guitarfish (G. halavi), pelagic thresher shark (A. pelagicus), and silvertip shark (C. albimarginatus).
Fig 3.
Distribution of elasmobranch and Cheloniidae sightings.
Maps showing sightings of (a) elasmobranchs, (b) sea turtles. Sighting locations are differentiated by colour to indicate: Sharks (light blue), rays (dark blue), guitarfish (black), hawksbill turtle (light green), and green turtle (dark green). Locations where signs of nesting were recorded (abandoned nests or tracks on the shore) are indicated as red dots in (b) (the same symbol is applied for both hawksbill and green turtle nesting activity). The boundaries of the NEOM gigaproject are indicated by a red line, and areas of particular importance are highlighted in red rectangles. Base layer created in MapBox Studio (https://studio.mapbox.com) using freely available data from MapBox (hillshade and terrain data; can be found within the software) and Natural Earth (www.naturalearthdata.com; bathymetry and geopolitical contours).
Table 3.
Break-down of number of species sighted by survey methods in the north-eastern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba.
Fig 4.
Conservation status of sighted elasmobranch and Cheloniidae species.
For each main taxonomic group, conservation status is shown as percentage of encountered species that fall into each threat category (CR = critically endangered, EN = endangered, VU = vulnerable, NT = near threatened, LC = least concern, as listed on the IUCN Red List of endangered species).