EOP Gold Coral (Gerardia sp.) Growth Measurements

Gold coral (Gerardia sp.) trees that were inspected years earlier on Pisces submersible dives were revisited and their change in size measured. The fishery for Gerardia operates using an estimate of average growth at 6mm/yr which would yield adult trees in a span of a few to several decades. In contrast independent radiometric studies suggest that large adult Gerardia colonies could be as much as a millenia old. The intent of this work was to revisit corals that had been inspected earlier and see if any appreciable growth could be seen. If not then the 6mm/yr estimate could be dismissed.

Used to generate a report/presentation for the precious coral planning team and the council process. Results are to be published in a peer reviewed journal.

Division: Ecosystem Sciences

Program: Ecosystems and Oceanography

Study Area: Lower Hawaiian Archipelago

Spatial Resolution: point data

Temporal Resolution: Sites visited at least twice, some periodically over the years

Frequency of Collection: NA

Time of Collection: NA

Types of Data Collected: Linear growth

Collection Method: length estimation using laser scale reference projected on the coral colony

Recording Media: Still photos, video logs on file with the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory

Storage Location: PIFSC

Storage Media / Format: digital files on CD

Security and Integrity Plans: NA

Backups: Available

Update Schedule: Strategic research product not a routine monitoring activity

Distribution Method: NA

1845 Wasp Boulevard, Building 176

Relational data table of gold coral colonies inspected for project

Site, Colony name, Height, Width, Year, Elapsed Year, Patch position, Depth, etc.

Read Me Text file include table fields.

Request access to the legacy data set

Not applicable

Estimates of the colony sizes were made by the pilot using the laser scale without knowing any of the measurements from the prior years. For this reason, some follow-up measurements are less than the initial from years earlier because growth is slow and the error in estimates is on the order of 5cm.

Not a continuous data set, project specific to address a management question. Time spent working with university collaborators on supporting radiometric work.

Pending PIFSC's decision

On file at PIFSC and published in peer-reviewed journal

There are photo, maps, and track lines associated with this data but the focus was to measure height and width of gold coral colonies once using a pair of laser dots then to remeasure them years later on a return visit. Testing the hypothesis that gold coral colonies grow at 6cm/yr (hypothesis rejected).