LIHU‘E — It is no secret that pinpointing the stressors which have led to the recent coral disease outbreak along Kaua‘i’s shores is going to require additional bodies, more funding and further study. The good news, however, is that a
LIHU‘E — It is no secret that pinpointing the stressors which have led to the recent coral disease outbreak along Kaua‘i’s shores is going to require additional bodies, more funding and further study.
The good news, however, is that a collaborative response effort, involving both state and federal agencies, is in the works.
On Wednesday, Dr. Bernardo Vargas-Angel, a coral disease specialist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, confirmed that the federal agency has organized a team of scientists to travel to Kaua‘i to continue the study. Specific dates have not been set.
“We are planning on going in early March,” he said, weather permitting. “The main idea is to augment the efforts that were started … (and gain) a better understanding of the extent of the disease outbreak.”
In addition, Christine Runyon, a second year graduate student in marine biology at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, has been chosen to lead the university’s ongoing investigation of the outbreak.
“We are doing our best to find her funding to get out there,” said Dr. Greta Aeby, assistant researcher for the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology at UH. “We hope to have her out there after classes are done at UH in May.”
Aeby said Runyon previously worked for her as an undergraduate research assistant and has a lot of experience working with coral disease. Runyon will work directly under the guidance of Aeby and Sean Callahan, a professor in UH’s Department of Microbiology.
“She is definitely the right one for the job,” Aeby said. “She’s got the training. She’s worked for me for years and is one of my top students.”
To get started, Runyon has begun screening underwater video taken by Terry Lilley — a Hanalei biologist and Eyes of the Reef volunteer who first alerted scientists of the outbreak — to try and track the historical levels of the disease.
The next step will be for Runyon to survey the sites where a cyanobacterial disease is killing populations of rice coral. In addition to ‘Anini, Makua and Hanalei, Lilley says he has photo and video documented the disease in dozens of other locations around the island.
While the disease can be identified via video, Aeby says it will be important for Runyon and others to visit the sites to verify and “double check.”
“She will be going to as many of those sites that Terry (Lilley) recorded as possible,” Aeby said. “If NOAA can hit some spots for us that would be awesome.”
Eventually, Aeby said Runyon will be collecting fresh bacterial samples as well as testing water quality, temperature, sediment loads, nutrients and other potential stressors.
“This will be a multi-year project,” Aeby said. “If we have to do this at first on nickels and dimes, we will … but we’ll get (Runyon) out there sometime.”
Despite the long road ahead, Aeby is excited about forming partnerships and moving in the right direction.
“We now have a unique collaborative effort among stakeholders, like Terry Lilley, academics, state and federal agencies, all willing to come together to address this problem,” she said. “It’s slow, but again the cue here is we’re all starting to work together as a giant team to save Hawai‘i’s reefs. And that’s what we need.”
Aeby maintains that preventing the reefs from dying will be a lot cheaper than trying to fix the problem after it is too late.
“If we can keep this public pressure up, that’s when change will occur,” she said. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
