Posted on: Monday, July 12, 2004

HAWAI'I'S ENVIRONMENT
Mysteries still abound around Islands

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Columnist

It amazes many of us how much science knows about our world.

But it amazes many scientists how little is known.

Hawai'i coral researchers within the past several years have noticed an aggressive soft coral, called snowflake coral or Carijoa riisei, invading the deep-water black coral fields around the islands at depths exceeding 230 feet.

It overgrows black corals and just about everything else in the deep waters where it's found, although it isn't particularly aggressive in shallow water.

One of the frightening things about it is that if it weren't for the interest in black coral, it might not have been noticed as readily.

"We don't have good information on deeper depths. We don't know what 'natural' is at those depths," said Rusty Brainard, chief of the Coral Reef Ecosystem Division of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The new invader was first spotted at Pearl Harbor in 1972, perhaps having arrived growing on the bottom of a ship or in ballast water that was pumped overboard.

It is capable of growing almost an inch a week, and threatens the state's black coral jewelry industry, said University of Hawai'i Sea Grant graduate trainee Samuel Kahng, writing in the Sea Grant "Makai" newsletter.

Kahng is part of a research project to learn more about the coral and how it spreads.

Meanwhile, other invaders could be growing unnoticed in little-known Hawai'i habitats.

"This one, they know it's invasive because people have been looking at black coral," Brainard said.

There are other niches in the Hawaiian landscape where mystery abounds.

One of them is the underground. There are entire communities of insects, plants and even aquatic animals that live in the ground — in lava tubes, deep cracks, caves and in the groundwater that flows under the islands. What's there is not well studied because it's hard to reach.

Researchers like Bishop Museum entomologist Frank Howarth have made a study of the fringes of this terrain, crawling through narrow cracks and caverns to at least catalogue the things that human-sized observers can reach.

The reefs of the isolated Northwestern Hawaiian Islands also are ripe for more study, researchers say, and many new species have been recorded there in just the past few years.

If you have a question or concern about the Hawaiian environment, drop a note to Jan TenBruggencate at P.O. Box 524, Lihu'e, HI 96766, e-mail jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or call (808) 245-3074.