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recorded 82 species, ah, just on Hawaii Island. Ah, we have over 100 species statewide that
<br />we’ve recorded in estuaries. The most abundant species that we come across time and time
<br />again is the - what we call the Kanda mullet, which is actually an invasive, introduced species of
<br />mullet, so it competes with actually the native mullet, um, another shocking stat is - that people
<br />don’t realize is that about roughly 50% of our fishes that we record in our nets are in estuaries
<br />are introduced species. So, we’re nearly half in, you know, non-native species in our estuaries
<br />that were at least recorded in our samples and then the most abundant native species that
<br />we’ve been recording, Aholehole and ‘Iao across our sites. Ah, this is kinda just showing a visual
<br />of the – kinda of the species composition that we see at least on the 3 sites on this Island. Um,
<br />again you see in the green here is the invasive Kanda, so you can see at Pelekane on Kawaihae,
<br />you know, it’s a highly impacted estuary but you can see the dominant – how dominant that
<br />species is over there, even here in Bay Front, you know, it’s pretty common. Another common
<br />one is the Oama especially during the summer months and then then the ‘Iao here \[unclear\]
<br />Kiholo. Um, aside from cast net sampling we’re also exploring different, newer technology, um,
<br />which is baited remote underwater video survey – so it’s basically two cameras, like a stereo
<br />system set up, angled inwards and it’s kind of two cameras simultaneously filming underwater –
<br />like in the same area – or same frame, video frame – and we use a special software called CGIS
<br />where we can actually get really precise measurements of fish in the footage so we get it down
<br />to a millimeter, um, accuracy and we can identify species, and species count. So, we get similar
<br />data from – of this video – as we do with the cast nets but this allows us to record and monitor
<br />areas where we cannot cast net like areas where there’s a lot of branches or rocks where the
<br />nets get stuck so we can actually expand our surveys by using this technology. Ah, we’re also
<br />exploring the use of what we call Environmental DNA or EDNA, so this is actually a technology
<br />that actually originated from criminal forensics, ah, but it's being widely used across a lot of
<br />different fields now, um, and it’s rapidly growing but basically what we do is, you know, we
<br />collect water samples – it feeds through this tube here and it goes through a pump and the
<br />water filters – catches on a filter and then we save that filter and any type of genetic material
<br />that’s floating in the water we can analyze for different species that may have been in or, or,
<br />you know, and present in that habitat. So, it’s a really unique, um, very useful method, of course
<br />there are some limitations to this, but it really enhances the data and information that we can
<br />get, um, and it compliments what we do with the cast net and the
<br />video surveys. Ah, we’re also doing some anchialine habitat surveys in the new Kapoho coastline
<br />after the lava flow. So anchialine pools are basically just brackish pools that are in land – they’re
<br />land locked and then that’s where you find the Opae ula – I think a lot of people are familiar
<br />with the small red shrimp – people like to keep in jars, but we’ve been hiking out to that new
<br />lava field to survey the new coastline for these new habitats, ah, this is – we’ve also been using a
<br />drone to kind of get into deeper parts of the lava field where we can’t hike out to yet to kinda
<br />just rapidly do some reconnaissance to see if there’s new habitats forming, this is kind of a 3-D
<br />rendering of the drone imagery that we’re getting – so this is actually one mile in – we haven’t
<br />actually gotten to this yet – but we can actually monitor these and survey these pools remotely
<br />with our drone and we can get 3-D renderings from the images we get. And we can actually
<br />make spatial measurements from these 3-D models and characterize the habitat and locate
<br />these habitats before we can actually, you know, get out there. This is a map of the Kapoho
<br />coastline – the new one – so the orange dots there you see – those are the old anchialine pools
<br />that got covered from the lava flow – so we had over about roughly 80 anchialine pools prior to
<br />the lava flow. The yellow light here is the old coastline and then, of course, the new coastline.
<br />The green X’s here are all the new anchialine pools that we recorded and mapped out so far –
<br />so roughly 80 pools lost in 2018 – we’ve recorded roughly 70 new pools, there’s the cool thing is
<br />20
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