Sara Al Balushi is from Oman and holds a degree in Natural Resources from the University of Adelaide, South Australia. She began her career as a marine consultant with Five Oceans, contributing to marine conservation projects across Saudi Arabia (Giga projects) and Fujairah, UAE. Her work has focused on GIS and remote sensing, including marine habitat mapping with Sentinel-2 and drone imagery. She has substantial experience managing large datasets from marine baseline studies and cetacean surveys, as well as building 3D photogrammetry models for coral health monitoring.

Her fieldwork includes aerial and vessel-based cetacean surveys across the Gulf of Oman, Arabian Gulf, and Red Sea. She also supervised sea turtle tagging projects with Oman’s Environment Authority and participated in the country’s first whale shark tagging project. She holds AMSO, H2S, BOSIET, and Small Powerboat & RIB Master certifications, reflecting her strong offshore, safety, and field training.

In 2024, Sara joined SHAMS (the General Organization for Conserving Coral Reefs and Sea Turtles) as a GIS Specialist, where she developed maps supporting species management. She is now pursuing her master’s degree in the Reef Ecology Lab at KAUST, with a research focus on marine mammals.