This post completes the blog for the 2010 Line Islands Expedition. We invite you to dip into the 45 earlier posts available in the blog archive. There you can follow the Fish, Benthic, and Microbe Teams as they visit the coral reefs at six of the Northern Line Islands, collecting data, samples, and adventures at each.
by Stuart Sandin, head researcher on the Fish Team
After spending the past four weeks surveying six of the Line Islands, our research teams have all made it home safely. Beyond personal health and safety, I am happy to report that we have successfully transported all of our data and samples back to our home institutions. And as a final bonus for our team members from the US, we returned in time to join family and friends for Thanksgiving. All in all, I would call this a successful trip.
Following our first visit to the Line Islands in 2005, our group spent countless hours trying to make sense of our observations. We had found that on intact coral reefs, the biomass of predatory fish can exceed that of their prey. How can a coral reef exist with so many predatory fish harassing their smaller compatriots? We had found that healthier coral reefs have much less seaweed but no increase in the biomass of the fish and other herbivores. Why does the same biomass of algae-eating herbivores control the seaweed effectively on intact reefs, but not on more impacted ecosystems? We had found that microbial concentrations were closely related to the abundance of seaweed on the reef. Are microbes thriving in the water chemistry created by the seaweed, or is the microbial ecology controlled by the geography and oceanography of the island? In this season of thanks and retrospection, my thoughts have returned to these questions, seeking to now incorporate our recent observations into our ecological understanding of coral reefs.
