|
that there’s a lot of these endemic shrimps in there that made it out there and there’s – they
<br />recruited into these habitats naturally – there’s these unidentified microbial communities that
<br />we’ve never seen before that we’ve seen – we’ve recorded out there so we’re still trying to
<br />figure out what that is, ah, and again, fortunately we don’t have any invasive species inhabiting
<br />these pools yet so it’s a kind of a cool thing to see it naturally re-set and have these new pristine
<br />habitats forming so we wanna kind of keep a good handle on this. Ah, OK, lastly, um, we’ve been
<br />establishing an East Hawaii Marine Monitoring Program, so much of our work up until now has
<br />been, you know, coastal in-land estuaries, you know, anchialine pools but we just recently
<br />started a marine monitoring program in East Hawaii where we’re doing fish and visual surveys of
<br />fish and \[unclear\] habitats or as the bottom habitat via scuba surveys, ah, we conducted a little
<br />over 70 surveys so far that they \[unclear\] Paukaa, Hilo Bay, Puhi Bay, Lalakea, and Waiuli in
<br />Keaukaha, ah, we recorded 90 species of fish so far, um, the most common species is Kole – we
<br />got big ones, small ones and everything in between. Different types of habitats have been
<br />coming across – mainly bolder habitats along the Hamakua coastlines – sperm grew - habitats,
<br />ah, like on blond reefs like outside of the break wall which is like ridges of coral separated by
<br />patches of sand and also shallow aggregate reefs like in Keaukaha. OK. Moving on to education
<br />and out-reach – we had, I mean, we have a – I’m sure some of you know John Kahiapo – he’s our
<br />Education Specialist – but he does a ton of outreach during the year but these are just kinda 3
<br />main points I wanna highlight. First is a Kilo Kano Workshop – so I mentioned earlier the invasive
<br />Kanda the invasive mullet – we had a group that – or a workshop that was hosted by Kua’aina
<br />Ulu ‘Auamo, we had fish pond practitioners come in from Oahu, Maui, Molokai, around Hilo, Big
<br />Island, to kind of learn more about the Kanda species because it’s kinda dominating a lot of
<br />Hawaiian fish ponds and it’s becoming a nuisance so we participated in that, show people how
<br />we ID the species, how we differentiate the two species, and then how we catch them and how
<br />we sample and how we measure them. So, it was a really good workshop but we want to try and
<br />spread awareness of this invasive mullet. Some of our staff
<br />was participating at the Waiuli Ocean Festival this past Saturday, and they hosted the Holoholo
<br />Keiki Fishing Tournament over there – I think they had over 70 kids, keiki, fishing and then,
<br />again, John Kahiapo is our DAR Education Specialist, but he’s conducting fishing education
<br />training classes for fishing violators – so this comes down from actually the environmental court
<br />– it’s a court mandate that people that, have fishing violations – that they go through a fishing
<br />education class as part of their, I guess, punishment or participant. OK, quickly, future initiatives
<br />that we’re aiming for – one is the Pua ‘ama Production in Hilo. Pua ’ama is like the juvenile
<br />striped mullet – the native ‘ama’ama species. So, we’re collaborating with some groups in
<br />Keaukaha to hopefully get this up and running again and we’re gonna use our Wailoa fishing
<br />station which is close to the Ironworks to start rearing and hopefully releasing some ‘ama’ama,
<br />also we wanted to do some estuary habitat restoration work in Hilo, particularly in Waiakea
<br />Pond. I’m sure many of you have noticed the California grass overtaking a lot of portions of the
<br />pond, so we want to remove the grass and hopefully cultivate and out-plant some native sedges
<br />in these areas to kind of prevent that from happening again. And we also want to – we’re
<br />pursuing funding for that but also to conduct some and host some invasive fishing tournaments
<br />in Hilo. We had one in 2020, a tilopia fishing tournament in Wailoa so we want to try to do that
<br />again but kind of expand it, um, a little bit more, um, so we’re currently pursuing some funding
<br />to take on these future initiatives. And that’s it – I know that was quick – a lot of things but again
<br />if there’s any questions or if you guys want more details on any of these – anything that I
<br />covered, by all means feel free to contact me, either email or phone or I can take any questions
<br />right now. Thank you.
<br />
<br />21
<br />
<br />
<br />
|