Hawaii island coral data

October 30, 2019 Outer and Inner Honaunau Coral Bleaching repoort

Today Brent and I figured out how to survey the outer patch of Plate Coral and the inner wall cascades in a single dive.  We decided to swim out to the end of the last prominence jutting out from the south point, where the outer patch of coral is and then navigate back into the bay and to the wall where the inner wall cascades are. 

Last time I dove on the inner bay coral - a month ago - Water temps were 84.2 degrees, which isn't good for plate coral.  I'd gotten hopeful it would be cooler today after yesterday's dives at South Pine Trees where temps were in the 82 degree range.  Indeed, today my computer was reading between 80 and 82 degrees at depth, even inside the bay.  That's not going to help all the coral that has suffered over the past two months, but it might mean that the worst of this bleaching event is over.

This was my first visit to the out patch of plate coral in over two years-- don't ask... Anyway, another reason I was hopeful for this small but beautiful expanse was that the plate coral at LAX, see report below, was mostly healthy.  Outside the bay today conditions seemed similar: some current, deeper water.  Here are some pics from this patch of coral and a movie.

 

Here are the still pics.

Moving back to the east into the coral gardens south of the wall in mid bay.  Some of these are finger corals, which have also been hit hard this year.

Here's Brent dragging the float on our way back in.

After a bit we altered our heading to about due north to get out to the wall.  We found a lot of plate coral on both sides of the big overhang and here is what we saw as we headed back in along the wall.

Hopefully, it won't get any worse this year than this with cooling water temps settling in this week.  But we've had two massive bleaching events in four years.  Much of the coral that died off in 2015 is still dead husks or algaed over.  I'll continue to document what I see as the future unfolds.

Here's the video from the wall.

 

 

October 8, 2019 Plate Coral bleaching at Pahoehoe Beach Park, Kona

Brent and I had planned to document the state of the patch of plate coral near the mouth of Honaunau Bay today.  That was until I got there at 7:05 am and found every parking spot already filled and the $5 lot closed.  Must be Ironman.  OK, lets do Ke'e, except that the road was too bumpy for one of the cars.

Plan C: Let's go to Pahoehoe Beach park, there's plate coral there!  And so we did.

Right as we dropped I noticed temps at 85 degrees; further out at around 60 feet it was still 84 degrees.  Very warm, and so when we got out to 64 FSW, about half an hour slow swim west along the wall, I spotted the patch of coral I was looking for.  It's on a little bump to the left in the sand flats. And it was bleached, as you can see from the stills and the movie.

Here's the video

 

There were other instances of bleaching of lobe and finger coral.  Here are the pics.

October 4, 2019: LAX Plate Coral: Healthy!

With the help of Kona Honu Divers I was able to dive on and photograph the extensive fields of Plate Coral at LAX, a north Kona dive site that is rarely visited because it is out or range of the local charters and very difficult to access for shore diving.  So Kona Honu scheduled the trip on their fast, new boat, Honu Lele, and away we went.

Following the depressing results I found at Honaunau last week, my expectations were low for the health of this huge expanse of gorgeous pillared plate coral, covering at least 10,000 sq ft of reefscape.  But when we dropped and I saw my computer reading 83 degrees – a degree and a half cooler than I'd been getting anywhere south, I was suddenly hopeful, and the hope was warranted.  Over the entire expanse of coral I found only a very few small instances of obvious bleaching, as small patches of white on the brown plates. All the rest looked healthy to my non-marine-biologist eyes.

Here are a few pics of what I found showing the patches of whitening.  I'll follow with more pics of healthy reef, and at the bottom there's a video of the site.

Now here are the rest of the shots showing healthier coral, and hopefully, the fantastic expanse of these fields of pillared plate coral.  I'd give the scientific name but I still can't tell the difference between porites Rus and porites Monticulosa.  It's one of those two.

Here's the video

 

 

 

September 30, 2019 Revisit to Honaunau inside plate coral bleaching

In August I surveyed and photographed the Plate Coral cascades on the inside wall of Honaunau Bay.  At that time it looked like about 10 percent of the coral was bleached.  Air temp was 86 degrees, water temp at depth was 84.2 degrees.

Today, September 30, 2019 I photographed the same coral cascades and other corals along the wall, westbound from the shallow Aloha sculpture.  The bleaching, as you can see from the pics from today, is much more extensive, perhaps covering 60 percent of the plate corals.  Water temps at depth were recorded on the same Suunto Vyper Novo as were temps in August, and the temps were the same: 84.2 degrees.  There is also significant additional bleaching on the finger corals and lobe corals.

We attempted to swim out to the plate coral patch near the south west point of the bay but turned back before we were able to reach it.

Here are the photos from today.

Condition of Plate Coral, 8/25/19, inside Honaunau Bay

August 25, 2019 Inside Plate Coral, Honaunau with bleaching

Three weeks ago I dove Honaunau for the first time in over a year, and the first thing I noticed was that water temps were over 82 at depth.  On the two cascades of plate coral inside the bay there were some small patches of what seemed like bleaching but I didn't have a camera so didn't record.

Today water temp at depth was 84.2 degrees on my Suunto Viper Novo.

I didn't get out to the smaller patch of plate coral out near the mouth of the bay.

But I did have my camera.  Here are the pictures, taken from the left turn over the wall at the sand patch, dropping on the way out to 60 FSW and documenting anything that looked like bleaching as far south-west as the far side of the large overhang.  On the way back I ascended to an average of 40 FSW and found more bleaching. 

I haven't named the plate coral species because I still can't tell the difference between P. rus and P. monticulosa.

First data collection: Honaunau Bay Plate Coral 10/21/2017

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a Hawaii statewide community reporting network aimed at enabling water people with a framework for contributing to the long-term protection of Hawaiian reefs.  The project is called Eyes of the Reef Hawaii (eyesofthereef.org), and they are active on all major islands.

Basic idea is that everyone who visits Hawaiian reefs can become a data collector/contributor for EOR's database of local coral and reef habitats.  The website provides instructions on how to document sites and file reports.  The reporting format on the EOR website has templates for reporting coral bleaching, disease, invasive marine organisms, and fish diseases. 

But you can also "adopt a coral head" and begin collecting a series of data documenting it over time.  Hawaii coordinator suggests finding cauliflower coral heads, but encourages other choices if you find a coral patch you want to adopt.  My choice was the small patch of Plate Coral with knobs (Porites rus) just off the south point of Honaunau Bay. GPS coordinates roughly  19°25'21.02"N 155°54'49.78"W.

This knobby plate coral is especially beautiful, with the little white knob tops looking just like snowballs covering the wider plate coral bases.  On Hawaii island there is at least one other larger colony of this coral offshore from Makalawena Beach, but I don't know of any others.  Here are two views of a portion of the coral patch.

My first visit to this coral patch to collect data was a failure; I lost my scale ruler on the swim out, and then couldn't remember its location and missed it altogether.  The heading out from entry point is 245˚ and you'll find it right at the end of the big ridge jutting out from the south point of Pu'uhonua o' Honaunau in about 25 FSW.  The video below shows the size of the patch.

 

I picked a small plate near the east edge of the patch and measured the height of a knob and the width of the plate.  Measurements I'll add next time are the width of the knob and the front-to-back length of the plate. The width of the target plate (large complete plate in the pic) was 29cm on this visit.  Knob height was 11cm.  Here are the pics.

Here are some other pics I took while I was out there to show additional features such as knob top detail.

I'll post regular reports on this coral patch, probably adjusting content to be more helpful to the EOR staff.