#TEMPORARY ACCESSION NUMBER: #ACCESSION NUMBER: #CONTRIBUTOR: Dr. Alison Green #CONTRIBUTOR INSTITUTION: Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority PO Box 1379 Townsville, Queensland 4810 Australia (+61-7) 4729-8490 email: agreen@tnc.org #ORIGINATOR: same #ORIGINATOR INSTITUTION: same #TITLE: 2002 Status of coral reefs on the main volcanic islands of American Samoa: a resurvey of long term monitoring sites including benthic communities, fish communities, and key macroinvertebrates #ABSTRACT: This study demonstrates the important role that long term monitoring programs can play in understanding the natural variability and long term trends in the coral reefs of American Samoa. One benefit of this study is that it provides an overview of the condition of the reefs on all the main volcanic islands simultaneously. It also provides a broad scale perspective for understanding the results of the site dedicated monitoring programs in Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Pago Pago Harbour (Aua transect: see below), which provide a much longer term perspective on the reefs of Tutuila (85 and 25 years respectively). This dataset includes the status report (PDF and MS Word) and raw survey data (MS Excel) made in 1996 and 2002. Survey sites inlcude all islands of American Samoa, although remote atolls of Swains and Rose were not made in 2002. Surveys were also made in the country of Western Samoa. #PURPOSE: Provide a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the coral ecosystems in 2002. #PROJECT: Coral Ecosystem Status, Department and Marine and Wildlife Resources, Pago Pago, American Samoa. 96799 #LOCATION EXTREMES: SOUTHERNMOST LATITUDE: 14.3662 SOUTHERNMOST LATITUDE HEMISPHERE: S NORTHERNMOST LATITUDE: 11.03 NORTHERNMOST LATITUDE HEMISPHERE: S WESTERNMOST LONGITUDE: 172.90 WESTERNMOST LONGITUDE HEMISPHERE: W EASTERNMOST LONGITUDE: 168.1333 EASTERNMOST LONGITUDE HEMISPHERE: W #LOCATION KEYWORDS: South Pacific, American Samoa, Western Samoa, Tutuila, Aunu'u, Ofu, Olosega, Ta'u, Manu'a Islands, Rose Atoll, Swains Atoll, Upolu, Savai'i #SAMPLING STATIONS: see: ../../data/originals/Appendix_2_Site_Locations.xls or ../../data/ASCII/Appendix_2_Site_Locations.csv #BEGIN AND END DATES: 19941001 - 20021231 #SAMPLING PERIODS: Details given in Chapter "Methods", page 23: ../../data/originals/AlisonGreens2002report.pdf (original) ../../data/originals/AlisonGreens2002report.doc (copy) ../../data/ASCII/AlisonGreens2002report.txt (copy) #PARAMETERS: fish species list mean adult species richness of each of the 12 most abundant fish families mean adult density of each of the 12 most abundant fish families mean adult biomass of each of the 12 most abundant fish families mean density of most abundant juvenile fishes substratum cover (percent) by category mean density of crown of thorns starfish mean density of the most abundant species of butterflyfish observations of coral bleaching on the reef slope #METHODOLOGY: An extensive description is given in Chapter "Methods", page 23: ../../data/originals/AlisonGreens2002report.pdf (original) ../../data/originals/AlisonGreens2002report.doc (copy) ../../data/ASCII/AlisonGreens2002report.txt (copy) Briefly: Reef Fish Communities: Visual census techniques along five replicate 50mX3m transects along the reef slope (depth=10m). Benthic Communities: Point-based method for habitat description, used to estimate the percent coverage of each substratum type on each of the fish transects. Coral bleaching surveys followed a standard form developed by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. Key Macroinvertebrates: A separate pass of the transects was conducted to quantify the abundance and size of the two key macroinvertebrates: giant clams and crown-of-thorns starfish. Each individual was counted, its size measured and recorded on underwater paper. #INSTRUMENT TYPES: SCUBA transect tape underwater paper #REFERENCES: Green, A.L. 2002 Status of the coral reefs of the Samoan Archipelago: Report to the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources, PO Box 3730, Pago Pago, American Samoa. 96799, 85pp Green, A.L. 1996a Status of the coral reefs of the Samoan Archipelago: Report to the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources, PO Box 3730, Pago Pago, American Samoa. 96799, 120pp Green, A.L. 1996b A preliminary assessment of the status of the coral reefs on Upolu Island, Western Samoa. Report to the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources, PO Box 3730, Pago Pago, American Samoa. 96799, 12pp Green, A.L. 1996c Coral reefs of Swains Island, American Samoa. Report to the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources, PO Box 3730, Pago Pago, American Samoa. 96799, 2pp. Green, A.L. 1996d Spatial, temporal and ontogenetic patterns of habitat use by coral reef fishes (Family Labridae) Marine Ecology Progress Series 133: 1-11 Green, A., Craig, P. 1999 Population size and structure of giant clams at Rose Atoll, an important refuge in the Samoan Archipelago. Coral Reefs 18: 205-211 Green, A., Hunter, C. 1998 A preliminary survey of the coral reef resources in the Tutuila Unit of the National Park of American Samoa. Final report to the U.S. National Park Service, Pago Pago, American Samoa, 42pp. Green, A.L., Birkeland, C.E., Randall, R.H. 1999 Twenty years of disturbance and change in Fagatele Bay National Marine Sanctuary, American Samoa. Pacific Science 53(4): 376400. Green, A.L., Birkeland, C.E., Randall, R.H., Smith, B.D., Wilkins, S. 1997a 78 years of coral reef degradation in Pago Pago Harbour: a quantitative record. Proc. 8th Int Coral Reef Sym 2: 1883-1888. Green, A.L., Burgett, J., Molina, M., Palawski, D., Gabrielson, P. 1997b The impact of a ship grounding and associated fuel spill at Rose Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, American Samoa. A report to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Honolulu, Hawaii, 60 pp. #SUBMITTING MEDIUM: email #FILE FORMATS: The original files were placed in ../../data/originals ASCII copies (either text or comma separated version) are in ../../data/ASCII. Filenames are descriptive (ie, the appendix number). Each file is self-descriptive. #DATASET SIZE: 15434 kbytes #NUMBER OF DATA UNITS: 7 islands #MISCELLANEOUS: