ISLAND OF MOLOKAI

KUMIMI POINT:

This site was very close physically to Kumimi Bay and was actually the southern point that protected part of the bay from wave exposure. This was also apparently a good surf spot as there were several surfers out just to the south of this point. The site was entirely a hard basalt shelf with a lot of vertical surface and nice intertidal zonation. The area that was sampled was the uppermost tidepools in the high intertidal region. These pools were, at high tide isolated from flushing and were highly saline (40 0/00) and very warm. They were almost entirely inhabited by Acanthophra spicifera-the first alien alga found on this trip. I didn’t find evidence of this species however, anywhere else at this site.

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.