After much anticipation of what the Menagerie will look like in 2013, a group of us set off to get our first look at what has happened on the site over the monsoon period.
Here’s a quick summary of what we discovered and did. Click the links to see the videos.
- All sections of line on the 3m line were broken or snapped (strong surge from monsoon season, maybe we should take down these lines at end of each season?)
- The loose ends were tied down by one of the locals who was staying on the island, it was lucky he didn’t cut them all off
- Some upturned coral in the shallows and even down to 6m to 8m or so, demonstrates the strength of the monsoon surge
- General health of coral was good, some new growth of coral noticeable
- Fish life was similar, no obvious change
- Saw Grouchy, a cuttlefish, 2 crocodile fish, a large garfish, and a small octopus running around at the 3m line
- Nitrate and phostate tests were all negative (could be the tests we used have a range that does not detect the concentrations that are there, or a possible cleanup of the water by monsoon rains, or could be the lack of tourists)
- We should continue the nitrate and phosphate tests throughout the year to see if there is an increase, which we may then attribute to increased tourism
- Less algae growth, the lines were mostly brown, but no hanging clumps like the previous year
- We repaired all lines, no loss of line markings and distance measurements are still more or less intact
- Set up 2 video stakes (one at 95,30, and another at 63,30)
- Tagged 3 branching corals (locations 91,8.8; 51,1.8; and 5,19.7) and 2 massive corals (locations 86,22.6 and 2,20.6)
- Anders and Yiling did depth calibration along the 12m and 3m lines, have not done the computations yet, but hopefully this can clean up our existing depth data
- Maita and Yiling did 3 lines of the life form catalog
- Lessons learnt from the life form catalog were that it’s hard to take photos of each life form along the line, and considering we might not have the same people all the time, consistency will be compromised
Thanks to Maita, Yiling, Gemma and Anders, who helped to participate in this first trip of 2013!
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