Seagrass Monitoring

We just finished up a round of Marine Protected Area (MPA) monitoring in seagrass beds all around Palau. Seagrass beds create crucial habitat for juvenile fish nurseries and many types of invertebrates, and it's been found that protecting seagrass and mangroves in addition to coral reefs is needed to conserve coral reef organisms throughout their development. PICRC surveys protected seagrass beds a few times a year as part of long term MPA monitoring projects. They have three permanent survey sites set up in each MPA and three at reference sites outside the MPAs for controlled comparison. At each site, we snorkel in a set direction and record size and abundance of "eating" fish (any commercially or culturally valuable fish), presence of "eating" invertebrates, and percent coverage of different species of seagrasses and corals along five 25m transects. My extremely important job during the surveys was to lay out the transect tapes and then roll them back up again once the surveys were completed. 

Transect Queen

Geory conducts a fish count. Many of the fish are small juveniles that camouflage perfectly in the seagrass, but Geory is amazing at spotting them. He would often busily record dozens of fish while I stared uncertainly out into the murky water, seeing nothing but swaying grasses.

Uly records percent coverage of different species of seagrass. Rather than trying to estimate coverage along the entire transect, she estimates the composition within this square quadrat at three places along the transect.

Near the end of the week, we arrived at our first MPA site only to find that the tide was too low to conduct the surveys. Without missing a beat, Kevin, the head researcher, brought the boat to a cove outside the MPA, explaining that we needed to do some "reconnaissance" while we waited for the tide to rise. Geory brought out a weighted net and expertly cast it over a school of tiny silvery herring, bringing his catch onboard to cheers of, "Sashimi!" Buckets I thought contained sampling material were revealed to be full of soy sauce and lemon, and Kevin and Geory showed me how to descale, behead, and clean the fish before eating them right then and there. All of these researchers know these sites and their tidal patterns intimately; this is clearly standard operating protocol for pre-survey snacks. There's no question that I'm getting the real Palauan experience here!

Geory casts the drop net. 

Tastes like science.