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.
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