Using Benthic Imagery to Assess the Coral Reef Community around Wake Atoll

Abstract

Wake Atoll is a remote island located approximately 2,300 miles southwest of the main Hawaiian Island chain in the central Pacific. Due to the isolation and military control over the atoll, few comprehensive studies about the surrounding reefs have been conducted. This work addresses the coral reef community structure surrounding Wake Atoll utilizing benthic image data collected from 2017 cruise to Wake by the Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD), of the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, and analyzed using the software, CoralNet. Benthic cover was estimates of basic functional groups indicate that macroalgae was found to be more dominant over the coral reef followed by coral, suggesting that the overall resilience of the reef is lower than one that is dominated by coral. An nMDS plus cluster analysis, suggest that most of the differences observed in the community structure appear to be depth based and not exposure based. The benthic substrate ratio was used to roughly estimate the overall condition of the coral reef by dividing the proportion of calcifying to non-calcifying organisms.