Saving Seafood

HAWAII: Nuisance algae threatens native coral reefs at Papahanaumokuakea

August 17, 2021 — Native coral ecosystems in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument are being threatened by an invasive species that’s become a big problem in a short amount of time.

Researchers recently completed a 20-day expedition to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and were alarmed to see how the monument’s reefs are being impacted by a mysterious algae.

“It’s never been recorded anywhere before,” said Brian Hauk, Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research resource protection specialist. “There’s no record of it in scientific publications or journals or research books, any of that kind of stuff. Nobody knows what this stuff is.”

Little is known about the nuisance algae classified as “chondria tumulosa.”

Read the full story at Hawaii News Now

$210M federal award to fund UH research focused on how ecosystems are changing

June 10, 2021 — A small trap sits on the coral reef for four months, imprisoning tiny particles for environmental DNA analysis. These findings give researchers a snapshot in time of the microhabitats of our oceans, and in the long-term, a sense of how our ecosystems are changing.

This is just one of the many research projects developed by students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa through the Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research — a partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Last week, NOAA set plans to continue their 44-year-old partnership, awarding $210 million to the University of Hawaii — more than double the amount of previous funding. The money will go toward the next five years of research for NOAA’s new institute: the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research.

According to deputy director of NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center Tia Brown, CIMAR “will help NOAA achieve our mission to better understand the ocean and atmosphere, which depends on all the research that we do … as well as the data and information to make sound decisions for healthy ecosystems, communities and a strong blue economy.”

In fiscal year 2022, CIMAR will continue the work of JIMAR while expanding to eight new research themes: ecological forecasting, ecosystem monitoring, ecosystem-based management, protection and restoration of resources, oceanographic monitoring and forecasting, climate science and impacts, air-sea interactions, and tsunamis and other long-period ocean waves.

Read the full story at Hawaii News Now