Oh Oh Oh my beautiful Islands
Rising from your low and your lonely home
Proudly showing what a hero you are of all times
You will always be and you be in my heart

Chorus: We are so proud of you
Your valour and humour that bring us together
PIPA you are the one you are my gift to humanity
God Bless our islands full of dreams and sweet sweet memories
God Bless our islands full of dreams and sweet sweet memories

Oh Oh Oh my beautiful Islands
The beautiful beaches and the green swaying palms
The ocean rich in life so full of promises
Your love for all that you want to share your riches
Oh I am so proud of you I still love you so

This is blog entry posted from the field during the 2012 Phoenix Islands Marine Protected Area (PIPA) Expedition. The Phoenix Islands are an isolated island chain more than 1,000 miles southwest of Hawaii. They are part of the island nation of Kiribati, which partnered with the New England Aquarium and Conservation International to create PIPA in 2008. Today it is one of the world's largest marine protected areas and a UNESCO world heritage site. This voyage is part of a regular series of scientific expeditions to investigate coral health and study ecosystems and biodiversity.

This post is from expedition leader Sangeeta Mangubhai.

We are on the return journey now, back to Apia, Samoa. The seas are rougher on the way home and many of my colleagues are down, bundled in their cabins. As boat pitches back and forth, I have the time to reflect on the expedition and what we have achieved.



In two short weeks we have managed to collect data on the health and resilience of the coral reefs to understand how the post-bleaching recovery is going. The "fish heads” from WHOI and KAUST have tagged nine manta rays from Kanton and Orona and there are data now being collected on how these animals move within and between islands in the Phoenix group, and how much time they spend on the open ocean. We have coral cores that WHOI researchers collected, which may tell us what has been the climatological history of the Phoenix Islands group over the last 200 to 250 years.

During the voyage home, I have been analyzing some of our monitoring data. Our temperature loggers are suggesting that there were unusually high temperatures in the Phoenix Islands in late 2009/early 2010 for about 3 to 6 months. I am keen to analyze all the photographs we collected on the coral benthos to assess whether this hot water event caused likely bleaching and mortality. It is a coral lover's worst nightmare – the thought of repeated coral bleaching events happening one after the other, leaving insufficient time for coral communities to fully recover, and changing reefs forever. However, as a coral ecologist, it remains instructive to observe the changing dynamics and to learn what we can from this special place.



It is clear from diving and collecting data on the reefs that the coral communities, especially those on the leeward side of reefs have undergone a large change, and the recovery is continuing slowly. Recruitment rates are low suggesting that these communities are relying on fragments of corals reattaching and growing, rather than large number of new corals settling on reefs.

Many of those iconic coral species on reefs like Acropora (which form everything from thick thickets to large plates), a decade after the 2002/2003 bleaching event, have not yet come back, suggesting the scarcity of healthy reproductive corals that would facilitate the recovery of these species. This is worrying, since Acropora corals create a lot of habitat diversity that is important to a number of fish species. However, there are still some areas where these Acropora corals thrive: places like Kanton lagoon and Enderbury, as well as many of the windward reefs are doing well, and hopefully will be a source of larvae that can help leeward side reefs recovery over the next decade.



What does give me hope is that our preliminary data analysis is showing that fish populations are healthy and continue to thrive. Large numbers of juvenile sharks at Kanton and Orona suggest that shark populations are well on their way to recovery. Where there are damaged reefs from old shipwrecks, large swarms of herbivorous fish are grazing away at the algae like lawn-mowers, keeping the algae from taking over the reefs.

It is clear that having healthy fish populations and not having additional man-made threats to stress
reefs further, is giving Phoenix Islands a fighting chance at recovery. The Phoenix Islands Protected Area is recovering at it's own pace, and will continue to inspire me and hopefully others to keep working on finding better ways to manage our coral reefs.

This is blog entry posted from the field during the 2012 Phoenix Islands Marine Protected Area (PIPA) Expedition. The Phoenix Islands are an isolated island chain more than 1,000 miles southwest of Hawaii. They are part of the island nation of Kiribati, which partnered with the New England Aquarium and Conservation International to create PIPA in 2008. Today it is one of the world's largest marine protected areas and a UNESCO world heritage site. This voyage is part of a regular series of scientific expeditions to investigate coral health and study ecosystems and biodiversity.

This post is from Kelton McMahon, post-doctoral fellow at WHOI and KAUST after the first day of diving near Kanton Island. Read all of Kelton's posts here. Pictures by Keith Ellenbogen.


No matter what you do for a living, how old you may be, or how experienced you are (or think you are), the desire to explore seems to transcend all. We spent two full weeks taking photos, collecting samples, and surveying species distributions and abundances on the reefs fringing the Phoenix Islands.



But like the thousands of photos we’d taken since arriving, our view of the reef was only a snapshot of the diversity and complexity that the ecosystem had to offer. As the sun set behind Nikumaroro Island, we donned our dive gear for a night dive exploration.

A flounder resting on an old coral head

The reef gets a complete makeover at night: new species, new colors and a new perspective of how the system operates. Some species are just settling down for a good night’s sleep. A green sea turtle sits on a sandy patch of bottom, holding its breath long enough to catch a few Z’s. Take a look under a nearby coral ledge and you may find a parrotfish encased in mucus cocoon.

Neon fusilier tucked in for the night amidst the Montipora coral

At the same time, an entirely different suite of animals are just waking up. A neon fusilier fish changes into its night colors for a evening cruising the reef. Meanwhile, a few large solitary shadows glide along the outskirts of our lights looking for a snack.

Don't let the fuzzy, turf-algae and sediment-covered shell fool you - there's a brightly colored hermit crab inside!

Diving by the narrow scope of an underwater flashlight has a way of emphasizing the tiny creatures that come out at night. As we scan the reef with our light, a myriad of iridescent eyes light up. As my light passes over a colorful hermit crab it freezes. Move the light away and he picks up his shell to scurry along his path. Bring the light back and he freezes once again freezes. It reminds me of playing red light-green light as a child.

Shrimp-tastic

Under the next coral ledge, we see two banded coral shrimp sifting through particles in the water column. It’s hard not to imagine that we’ve stumbled upon an old married couple on a dinner date. As the dive comes to an end and we float suspended above the reef on our safety stop, a larval octopus dances in our lights.

Back aboard the skiff, we cruise towards the Nai’a under a blanket of stars. Along the side of the boat, a pod of bottlenose dolphins rides our bow wake. As they crisscross paths below us, they trail plumes of green bioluminescence like jets in an airshow. It was the grand finale to yet another amazing exploration of the Phoenix Islands.

This is blog entry posted from the field during the 2012 Phoenix Islands Marine Protected Area (PIPA) Expedition. The Phoenix Islands are an isolated island chain more than 1,000 miles southwest of Hawaii. They are part of the island nation of Kiribati, which partnered with the New England Aquarium and Conservation International to create PIPA in 2008. Today it is one of the world's largest marine protected areas and a UNESCO world heritage site. This voyage is part of a regular series of scientific expeditions to investigate coral health and study ecosystems and biodiversity.

This post is from expedition leader Sangeeta Mangubhai.

We are at our final atoll, Nikumaroro. (Read about our other adventures on this island here and here.) I always like to end on Nikumaroro – not only is the atoll scenically stunning with its long extended reef flats, thick tropical vegetation and white sandy beaches, but the reefs here seem to draw lots of pelagic fish near or adjacent to reefs, and the shark populations are still very healthy.



So far, we have recorded six species of sharks in the Phoenix Islands. The most common have been grey reef, white tip and black tip reefs sharks which are fairly typically found on healthy coral reefs. We have also seen grey nurse, silver tip and scalloped hammerhead sharks at a couple of the atolls. This is heartening when so many coral reefs around the world have such decimated populations of sharks.




The lagoon at Nikumaroro is shallow and acts as a nursery area for sharks, especially blacktips. Yesterday Tuake Teema, our representative from the Kiribati government (who was with us for the first expedition and the one in 2009) led a small trip into the lagoon to see if juvenile sharks were still present in the lagoon.




We were happy to see juvenile sharks in the lagoon, a few of which are featured above. This sighting is particularly important since, according to Tuake, there have been a number of shark finning boats that have come into these islands and have severely impacted populations at Kanton, Orona and Rawaki. As Tuake and Keith approached the waters’ edge 15 small sharks came up curiously to check them out, swimming right up to their ankles. With the inception of PIPA, all of the islands became no-take zones. Now, shark finning is highly illegal. Protecting sharks is one of the many functions of the no-take zones within the Phoenix Islands Protected Area.




Out on the reefs larger grey reef, white tip and black tip sharks patrol the reefs. As soon as we jump in, they race up to the surface often circling us a couple of times and then following us to the bottom. They then continue on their patrols crossing our paths many times. These animals are just spectacular to see in the water – the way they move so quickly under the water and how finely atuned they are to injured fish. If they spot an injured fish within second a number of sharks can race out of the depths and within seconds the fish is gone!




The recovery of the shark populations at these previously fished atolls is slow, but it is happening. If we can continue to protect PIPA, they will come back to their previous numbers.