By ODA Hawai’i Island Chapter Leader Sarah Milisen
Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs, for short) are tools fishers use for creating a gathering place for fish in an offshore environment. It gets very hot under the equatorial sun, and these devices create shade underneath them where the critters find respite from the sun.
Some FADs are placed by the government (state approved), but a lot are illegal: illegally moored or illegally placed offshore to drift in the currents and aggregate fish. When they are lost, or break free of their mooring, they can wind up on other local or distant reefs and land and wreak havoc.
This situation was another perfect expedition for our boat Makau.
I was informed by Dylan Currier, of Deep Water Hawaii, that a FAD had landed on the reef off Kaiwi Point, and an emergency mission the next day was planned. Please read about our initial mission, here, if you haven't already! After our quick pick up on August 1, we unfortunately couldn’t remove all of the plastic strapping streamers on the reef, and I wanted to plan another day to return and pick it all up—and September 2nd was that day!
On September 2nd, we had a 2-part mission, remove the FAD debris, and pick up tires. And boy, we were successful! (Read about the tire portion, here!) BUT, my favorite part of the day really was completely cleaning the reef from the FAD streamers. They were EVERYWHERE. All tangled up in each small coral head, gripping onto and weaving into the corals.
All the little streamers we found, the corals had bleached on that same area where the streamers were, having suffocated. But the coral itself had not suffocated completely yet—they can regrow that area as long as other portions of the coral are healthy—and we returned quick enough to avoid that serious damage—so I took a before GoPro video scan, and an AFTER-video scan, and WOW—what a delightful difference a couple divers made!!!
We had Dr. Anita on board, a Kelp Forest Ecologist for MBARI, and Monterey Bay Aquarium Dive Safety Officer, Tori, to crush the task, as well as our veteran cleanup divers, Tony, myself, Juan, and Kay. Captain John G manned the live boat as we cleaned, and dang, it felt really good to 100% clean an impacted site.
We will be back to monitor growth and progress over the next year—to check on coral regrowth, as well as coral bleaching in this area as the El Niño effects start showing up in the coming months. This site is absolutely COVERED in beautiful Cauliflower corals—and our last El Niño event had a 90% bleaching in some areas of that coral—so we are trying our best to give these corals the BEST possible chances of success during this El Niño event.
If you like what we do, please consider donating to our efforts! Your donation goes towards fuel for our boats, new supplies like shears and bags, and boat maintenance to keep our boat afloat! (pun intended). 🙂
