ISLAND OF MOLOKAI

palaupi point

This site was a south/southeast facing reef flat with a large beach on shore. There was a small point jutting out from the east side of this site with an old and broken up fish pond shoreward from the point. There was very distinct horizontal zonation occurring on a perpendicular angle from shore. Closest to the beach on rubble substrate was Acanthophora spicifera, and the blue-green alga Lyngbya and turfs. This zone extended out to about 100 meters offshore. At 150 meters offshore more macroalge became abundant. Species that were commonly found were Spyridia filamentosa, Dictyota acutiloba, Galaxaura spp. , Lynbya majuscula, Halimeda discoidea. Small coral colonies were found scattered throughout this zone. No aliens were found in this middle portion of the reef flat. Again moving out farther from shore more coral became abundant but macroalgae also continued to increase. Dictyosphaeria spp. was found growing over several colonies of coral. However, moving out another 50 meters (250 meters offshore), coral became the dominant organism and the only macroalgae that was found out here was Galaxaura, Actinotrichia, Melanamansia, Jania and Halimeda. Porites lobabta, P. compressa and P. evermani were growing almost all the way out of the water here. Large herbivorous fish were seen roaming throughout the entire reef flat. There were several abandoned nets found wrapped around coral here. There was very little evidence of human activity on shore here aside from a few horses across the street, some fisherman walking the reef and some people on the beach.

Table 1.  Information regarding site characteristics and alien species abundances. The  number recorded for each alien species of algae is a ranking of the abundance of that species at each given site. Impact ranking values range from 0 (not present) to 10 (100% cover). 

Table 2.  Species list of all of the algal samples that were collected at this site. Alien species are displayed in green.  

Table 3.  Species list and relative abundance of herbivores at this location.