Events linked to Climate Change (such as cyclone Winston in 2016) are preached to be Acts of God. In an interesting article by Patrick Nunn he argues why (usually Western) conservation and climate change initiatives in the Pacific are bound to fail if they don’t account for the strong role …
Establishing Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is a common strategy to conserve marine ecosystem and to enhance the recovery of degraded systems. Large MPAs have been shown to be very effective, while the effectiveness of small MPAs (here <1km²) is still discussed. Small MPAs might not be sufficient in size to …
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 …
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 …
(Updates from Steven on his sea cucumber project – sorry for the late upload)! Alright. Another week in the field done and dusted. Here I/we stand at t=2 done, which means I now have 3 data points for SOC and DOC, another set of sediment cores from each enclosure, and …
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 …
The first short village stay has just been completed by the benthic and fish teams of REPICORE who have just returned to Suva following a brilliant nine days at Dakuibeqa village. Together with our compressor, dive tanks, gear, fuel, and gifts of Kava, we loaded …
