Fiji - Kabara (FJKA34)

Setting

FJKA34 is a deep fore-reef station off Kabara, southern Lau, surveyed on 14 June 2013 during the Global Reef Expedition. The expedition's own site notes describe the Kabara fore reef as steepening sharply below about 15 m; that is the survey team's characterization.

General benthic features

The photographs show spur-and-groove topography — a spur shoulder rising off pale sand, a spur flank falling away into blue — carrying a low, dense veneer of small colonies over consolidated pavement heavily encrusted with pink crustose coralline algae. Mauve-pink pocilloporids and tan digitate and encrusting colonies dominate that veneer, with pale massive heads scattered among them and one exceptionally large massive Porites head standing clear of the substrate.

Coral cover

• Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
• An in situ point-count transect (station CTD cast to 35.7 m) recorded 19% live coral cover (LOF-GRE in situ transects; mean of all of this station's own transects) against 72% total algal cover — algae occupying nearly four times the substrate coral did.
• Together the two figures account for about 91% of the transect, leaving little unclassified.
• Transect mean 19 ± 3.8% SE (n = 4 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is this all-transect mean.

Stressors

No bleaching, disease lesions, or crown-of-thorns scarring are visible in any frame, but Anderson's sampling sheet records one of the three colonies sampled here (F63) as 20% bleached at the base of the colony. The Living Oceans Foundation transects here recorded 2.0% cyanobacteria and no recently dead coral; they carry no bleaching, disease, or crown-of-thorns field. Recent thermal exposure at the Fiji virtual station averages an annual maximum of 8.9 degree-heating-weeks (NOAA Coral Reef Watch, 2021-2025), above the 8 DHW level at which severe bleaching and mortality are expected.

Fish and other fauna

Fish life is conspicuous: one frame is filled with a planktivore aggregation of damselfishes above the reef.

Comparisons with other data

Fore Reef Sites (FJKA32, FJKA34, FJKA33, FJKA30) have spur and groove morphologies on the terrace (5-12m) with large buildup of sediment in between spurs. Around 15m the slope becomes very steep, with lots small-medium sized acroporids and Pocillopora. FJKA31 had mixed habitats of shallow fore reef terrace with small acroporid colonies and fore reef sand flats. Large Porites lobata colonies and tabular acroporids occur within the sand flats, especially in deeper areas (30-50 m). The expedition's own site table classifies FJKA34 as a barrier reef on an exposed aspect, surveyed on the fore reef, outside the lagoon. Alongside the hard coral already reported for this site, the same transects recorded 35% crustose coralline algae, 29% turf, 4.5% sediment-laden turf, 2.0% macroalgae, and 2.0% cyanobacteria (72% algae in all). Non-living substrate came to 71% pavement, 2.0% dead coral, 4.8% rubble, and 1.0% sand. Paired fish transects recorded about 44 fish species per transect and about 15 kg per 100 m2 of biomass. The benthic figures are means of all of this station's own transects in the expedition's per-transect benthic records, and the fish figures come from its paired fish transects; all are survey results, not photographic estimates.

Dive record

Bottom time was 63 minutes on Anderson's own dive, during which the three colonies were sampled; the expedition team's log records the team's separate visit to this station that afternoon.

Other notes

The photographs from this dive are wide-angle reef frames and they are worth reading, but with one boundary stated up front: all eight are brightly sunlit, blue-water frames from a dive that went no deeper than 11.9 m (the 35.7 m figure is the station CTD cast, not a dive or survey depth). Three Pocillopora colonies were tagged and sampled here (numbered tags), and they photograph as pale cream-to-tan branching colonies with polyps extended; they are individual sampling records, not a description of the reef.