During the recent feedback trip of the REPICORE team, we were accompanied by photographer Tom Vierus, who was documenting our travels and meetings. Tom will use his beautiful imagery and video clips to produce a short documentary on our efforts to feed back project outcomes to stakeholders in the three …
By Natalie Prinz. Even though the southern Cook Islands were spared from severe coral bleaching in the recent large-scale global bleaching event, the El Niño in 2015/16, we experienced bleaching this year in the Aitutaki Lagoon. In the Aitutaki Lagoon the first bleached corals have been observed as early …
By Akuila Cakacaka Four months after the devastating impact of tropical Cyclone Winston, I visited the villages of Nakodu and Tuatua on Koro island and Natokalau village on Ovalau island to understand how the people have coped with the effects and aftermath of the storm. These villages were some of …
The third global bleaching event has been taking place over the last months. Having slowly extended across the Pacific Ocean, unusually high water temperatures emerged in Fiji in February this year. Victor Bonito of Reef Explorer Fiji Ltd. is located around 100km west of our base in Suva at the …
Three weeks ago, the largest cyclone ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere hit Fiji. At the time that the cyclone hit, the water around Fiji was around 1.5°C higher than usual, and consequently was experiencing high amounts of coral bleaching (see previous blog). Unusually high water temperatures are associated to …
So it seems that Fiji has been unable to escape the extreme water temperatures of the 2015/2016 El Niño after all. Two of our team members (Steven and Ryan) last week reported temperatures in Savusavu (on the south of Vanua Levu) rising to over 35°C in shallow reefs. Further west …
The transition from fieldwork into a laboratory is an interesting one; from days baking in the sun (or soaking in the rain) filled with carrying tanks and diving gear, spending hours underwater and living in a wetsuit to days sitting in a lab, wearing a lab coat, dealing with corrosive …
Tiles at our deeper site within the tabu (closed to fishing) area fixed onto pavement and secured at an angle to prevent sedimentation. One of the tiles which was adjusted to contain a microstructure, with 196 holes (1mm deep) on both the top and underside. A coral recruit from within …
In addition to the projects based around Viti Levu, REPICORE has an additional benthic project involving sea cucumbers on Vanua Levu. I (Steven Lee – ISATEC program) have developed this project along with the REPICORE team and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Fiji. This project, based in Natuvu village, …
After drilling 18242 (!) 1mm deep holes into 140 sandstone tiles, several methodological discussions, an unknown number of trips to hardware stores and many dives, we have finally completed the tile installation at Namuka Reef, near to Suva. We are interested in three different questions here; (i) how do locally …
