FRANCE: As man-made threats to coral reefs mount, and interest in conserving reef ecosystems grows, scientists have turned to studying extremely remote and uninhabited reefs in an effort to understand what coral reefs would be like in the absence of humans. A number of islands and atolls in the Pacific Ocean remain virtually untouched by human influence, situated hundreds of kilometers from the nearest human populations.
A study published today by scientists at the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the University of Victoria in the journal PLOS ONE draws on data from nearly 40 islands and atolls across the central and western Pacific, including 25 unpopulated islands, to investigate the relative influence of environmental variation and human presence on reef fish assemblages. The resulting message is sobering.
After accounting for environmental variation among the reefs, the team of scientists estimates that human presence is associated with large reductions in reef fish biomass compared to projections for an uninhabited state – 20% to 78% depletion at reefs in the Main Hawaiian islands, up to 69% depletion in the Mariana Archipelago and up to 56% depletion in American Samoa.
At the core of the study is an extensive dataset of fish abundance across the Pacific, gathered by divers conducting visual surveys of reefs during more than 2,000 hours of underwater observation at reef sites spanning 39 U.S. Pacific islands and atolls. The surveys were performed as part of NOAA’s Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program, one of the world’s largest coral reef monitoring efforts. The full dataset includes surveys of reef fish, coral habitat and satellite-derived measurements of oceanographic conditions at each reef location including sea surface temperature, wave energy and oceanic productivity.
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