-: All right.
Aloha everybody and welcome to our Mokupapapa
third Thursday by the Bay lecture series
in partnership with the office of
National Marine Sanctuaries
and our national Marine sanctuary foundation.
And before we get going with the presentation,
we have our native Hawaiian education person, Malia Evans
who will be presenting our name song for Papahanaumokuakea.
(foreign language)
and I will turn it over to,
let me turn it over to you Malia.
-: All right, well, welcome everybody.
I'm just gonna begin our presentation today
by chanting an oli as Andy said (foreign language)
To honor the sacred area that we are privileged
to take care of.
(chanting in foreign language)
-: (foreign language) That was a wonderful.
So for those of you who are joining us
from outside of Hawaii, that is a traditional,
one of the many traditional openings for entry.
And this is particularly for entry into
Papahanaumokuakea, which we will be virtually bringing you
into in this presentation, but in the Hawaiian culture
it's customary to open with an Oli
before you go into the forest
or before undertaking a practice or a voyage
to bring wisdom, to bring knowledge,
to bring respect to the area.
So we're so grateful to be able to share that
with you today.
And you are here today for our,
the third lecture series.
And we are a part of the office of
National Marine Sanctuaries.
And we have many sites across the country.
On the East coast, we have sites at the Stellwagen bank
and monitor Mallows Bay, Greece reef, flower garden banks
several sites on the West coast
including Olympic coast, Cordell bank, honorary Bay.
Now here in the Pacific, we have our
Hawaiian islands humpback whale, national Marine sanctuary
and our Marine national monument Papahanaumokuakea.
Finally, we have a site down in American Samoa,
the Fangatele Bay, the national Marine sanctuary
of American Samoa.
But we work for Papahanaumokuakea
and we're the largest, fully protected area
in the world, actually 500 each 2000 square miles.
It covers the entire Northwestern Hawaiian islands
and it's extends out to the US exclusive economic zone.
So our hosts today are myself, Andy Collins.
I'm the education coordinator for Papahanaumokuakea.
Malia Evans, who's there, we met earlier our education
and need point outreach specialist working under
national Marine sanctuary foundation.
And Justin Umholtz our education specialist.
And we all work in Hilo at our beautiful Mokupapapa
discovery center.
I forgot to mention that if you do have any issues
with audio or having any problems,
please use the chat function
and Justin will be able to help you get online
if you're not hearing the audio
or having any other technical issues.
But we, like I said we work over at Mokupapapa
discovery center which is the window to Papahanaumokuakea.
It's a beautiful 30,000 square foot facility
we have in Hilo Hawaii.
We have a wonderful 3,500 gallon saltwater aquarium
and many unique displays in Hawaiian and in English.
And if you do get over to Hilo, please come see us.
Hopefully after the pandemic ends
we will reopen to the public.
Right now, we've been doing all of our education programs
and everything virtually.
So you can't access the facility
but we will hopefully reopen hopefully by summer
that would be nice.
But the national Marine sanctuary system
and Papahanaumokuakea protect these special areas
for many features, such as biodiversity.
Some of the wonderful maritime heritage sites
in the in Papahanaumokuakea,
We have many 18th century 19th
and 18th and 19th century whaling shipwrecks
and that are almost perfectly preserved
because of people don't access that area.
And so there are a lot of the materials
from those wrecks are still on the bottom
and we study those and curate those.
We also have important cultural heritage sites
in Papahanaumokuakea such as this site have mokumanamana
which is one of the highest concentrations
of cultural sites anywhere in the Hawaiian archipelago.
They also provide spaces for these
like these green sea turtle and monk seal
who are enjoying a non socially distance hug Fest
on French frigate Shoals.
But these places provide shelter for these special animals.
And we do a lot of education around those sites
because if we don't tell the next generation
and even our generation about what's there
and why it's important they won't necessarily
wanna protect it.
And we also do a lot of outreach using particularly
our volunteer Corps and research in all the different sites
across the system.
This is at Stellwagen national Marine sanctuary.
Stellwagen Bank on the East coast
where they study the behavior of humpback whales.
And one of the interesting things they use
some of this research for is correcting or changing
shipping lanes so that they don't go through
the highest density of where humpback whales are.
So we take this research and we apply it
in management practices.
We also conduct monitoring in these sites to find out
how they're doing over time and reacting
to human impacts and climate change.
We also do some restoration work such as this amazing
coral reef restoration work in the Florida keys.
And these are just amazing spaces to reconnect
with your spirit, reconnect with nature,
recharge and refuel.
And this is a person experiencing,
I think this is at Olympic coast on the West coast
just beautiful places to reconnect with nature.
And if you're interested, please volunteer with us.
We have several hundred volunteers that have
a thousand volunteers that work with
the national Marine sanctuary system
across the program.
And we'd love to have you if you'd like to volunteer
no matter where you are in US.
So at the moment, and for this today's presentation
I would like to welcome our Marine scientist, Jon Martinez.
And Jon, you could turn on your webcam
and I will switch the presentation over to you.
But Jon has been diligently working on the report
that we recently released, the state of the monument report.
And hold on for a second, let me just switch it over to you.
And do you have your webcam on?
There we go.
Okay, great.
All right.
So I will turn it over to you, Jon
to talk about the recent report
and the work that you've been doing on.
So thank you for joining us.
-: Great, thanks, Andy.
Can you folks hear me?
Andy: Yep we can hear you great.
Excellent, thank you.
Okay and you see my screen?
Andy: Yes.
-: Excellent.
Well, thanks for the introduction Andy.
Again, my name is Jon Martinez.
I work for the office of national Marine sanctuaries
for the Papahanaumokuakea Marine national monument.
And today we wanted to share with you folks
a set of 23 assessments that we've done
for resources in the monument.
So we actually packaged this up in a report,
we're calling The State of the Monument Report.
A quick plug for you here.
If you're interested in looking at the reports
go to our website, papahanaumokuakea.gov.
You click on the news link or the library link,
you should be able to find that.
So these, but the bulk of what we're gonna talk about today
are the assessments themselves.
This is actually an adaptation of a process that the office
of national Marine sanctuaries usually uses to assess
this data of resources.
And those are packaged in a report called
the Condition Report.
So we actually have one that was done in 2009.
And if you're interested in that, you can also find that
on the website.
Just a brief introduction to the report
and then we'll get into the assessments.
So this report covers a period of 2008 to 2019,
so that's about 11 years of time.
In the report you'll see various sections notated.
The site history section is essentially an introduction.
It tells you a lot about the background
and the history of the site and the governance structure.
If you're interested in that.
The pressure section is where we have a discussion
on various human induced and natural pressures
that affect the state of resources in the monument.
And then the bulk of the report and what we're
gonna talk about today is the actual assessments themselves
on the state of the state and the other resources
in the monument.
And that spans three different categories.
We have resources as in the physical environment,
living resources and heritage resources.
When we talk about heritage we're referring to
historical artifacts and objects as well as
native Hawaiian cultural resources.
And then we finally wrap that up with a discussion
on the response to pressures by the management agencies.
So this framework is really it's called
the pressure state response framework.
It's something that the office of
national Marine sanctuaries has been using
for quite a long time.
And we were able to use this framework
for these assessments.
The idea being that we identify the various pressures
that influenced the state or condition
of the resources in the monument.
And then we have a discussion on the management responses
to address just those issues.
So they can address the pressures themselves
or actually look at any potential opportunities
to improve the States or trends that we found
from our assessment.
Just another word on the development of these assessments
and some numbers for you here.
So this is an 11 year time series.
We focused on our original 2006 designation boundary.
So if you see the map on the right,
the area within the lighter blue lines,
that's the area we were focusing on.
The white line indicates the area of the expanded monuments
which was expanded in 2016.
In the report, we do include information
related to the expanded area and resources within.
But our main focus was on that 2006
designation boundary area.
So I mentioned we have 23 assessments and these are actually
spread out across 12 broader question areas.
So we pose these standard questions,
and then we have several assessments to address those.
For example, a question might be, what is the status
of bio-diversity in the monument?
And then we might have a couple of assessments,
one for Marine biodiversity,
one for terrestrial biodiversity, nested underneath them.
To do this, it was a huge effort.
We had to work with up to 40 subject matter experts.
And we were fortunate to have their time and attention.
It provided data, their expert opinion
on the actual rankings and the trends,
and they provided original writing in some cases.
So we're really grateful for their support on that.
We had a six person editorial team.
We had three peer reviewers that improved
our draft versions dramatically, and a team of over 10
staff members that contributed to this.
So I just wanna give a little bit of acknowledgement
to all those efforts ahead of time.
Okay so for the assessments that we worked on,
this is the list of them.
They're spread across these different areas.
Physical resources we had climate and habitats
water quality and contaminants.
For living resources, we had a combination of
ecological parameters like biodiversity
or non-indigenous species.
And then we had several individual species
or groups of species that we did assessments for
because the monument managers needed this information
for those groups specifically.
And then we also did assessments for heritage resources
including maritime, historic and native Hawaiian resources.
You make the distinction between what we're calling maritime
and historic here, because these resources are exposed
to different environmental conditions.
So when we talk about maritime
we mean those resources in the ocean.
So think shipwrecks and crashed planes
for historic think cannons or other structures
that are in there on midway or on land.
So before we get us to the assessments
I just wanted to orient you to some of the symbology
you're gonna see and some of the terms you're gonna hear.
So we did these assessments based on
a six point scale ranging from good to poor.
And we had a category for undetermined.
Undetermined would be a case where we felt there wasn't
enough data to do an assessment of a status.
And for each of these other five categories,
there was a specific criteria for each individual question
and assessment area.
And those details you could find in the report
if you're interested in the appendix.
But I can give you a general idea of what postludes
their core and so on.
So something would be given a banking good,
if the ecosystem wasn't as close to a pristine state
as possible vice could possibly be assessed.
Something would be given a rank of poor,
if there were several impairments to whatever that resources
that we're assessing.
And it seems to have broader ecosystem implications.
Or in the case where we're assessing species
or a group of species where those species populations
have become severely depressed and the prospects
for their recovery are just uncertain.
Something would be ranked as fair if say maybe one or two
indicators indicated some impairment
related to that resource.
But the overall ecosystem seem to be unaffected by it,
or very minimally effected by it.
And then good slash fair and fair slash poor,
are middle points between those two.
So for trends, we had a five point scale.
You have conditions appear to be improving,
conditions don't appear to be changing so stable.
Conditions appear to be declining
and then categories for undetermined.
If we didn't have enough data to actually assess a trend
or not applicable, if for some reason it wasn't applicable.
We also wanted to qualify the type of information
we were using to do these assessments
because it does vary by assessment.
So we had a three point score for that.
We have robust, medium and limited.
Something would be given a three point robust score,
if there was a lot of evidence and information
that we had to be able to make these assessments.
So I think a multiple of peer reviewed
published journal articles data collected every year
from this 11 year time period.
Many experts for us to consult with that sort of thing.
Something would be given evidence score up limited
if say there was only maybe one or two type of data,
a year's worth of time data or this 10 year time period.
Or if you had to heavily lean on expert opinion.
And then it would be given a ranking of medium,
if it was somewhere in the middle.
Maybe there's three or four of those 10 years
that have data available to use
but not the entire timeframe.
And then you see the symbol on the bottom,
you're gonna see a lot of symbols like this.
This example indicates a fair condition with medium evidence
used to determine the condition and then a declining trend
with medium evidence used to determine that trend.
It can all make more sense as we look at some examples.
Okay, so let's get into it.
Starting with the physical resources,
we assessed changes in climate over this period of time.
And if those changes in climate effected water or habitat.
So this was rated as fair slash poor
with a decreasing trend.
And we used several different indicators for this.
In fact, one of the strengths of using the format
that we used is that it allows us to use
different indicators particularly ones that are available
and have strong data sets to them.
So if you look at this Mitch here,
if you see this map with the red, this indicates the average
the average temperature over this 10 year time period.
And that's compared to the average temperature
from the time period before that.
So what you're seeing here is actually significantly
increased temperatures in the ocean across the monument
over this 10 year time period,
compared to the period before.
So the ocean has gotten warmer over this
10 year time period.
We also use other metrics like the number of
extreme weather events that occurred.
So in this 10 year time period, we had two cyclones,
three tropical storms, three tropical depressions
and the ten years before that there was less than
half of that many.
We looked at sea level rise and a lot of other indicators
and our assessment was that the condition
was fair slash poor with a declining trend.
Largely being worried about climate change.
I won't talk more about this because
we're gonna have somebody hopefully to give a webinar
on this specific topic either in the summer.
So moving on to the habitats,
the status was a fair slash poor with an unknown trend.
Now, when we talk about habitats we're thinking about
terrestrial and Marine habitats.
And it's actually highly unfeasible to assess and monitor
every single habitat in the entire monument.
So we used the data that we had available to us.
The example I'm gonna share with you here today
is that French Frigate Shoals atoll.
So you see this Island, the photo in the middle,
that represents East Island and in 2018
Hurricane Walaka came through that atoll
and severely eroded that Island.
And that's the photo that you see on the right.
It eroded it to less than 90% of what it was before.
The photo you see on the bottom shows slight depletion
of sediment over time.
So this is maybe three months after
the hurricane came through.
You can see, you can tell that it's still not
the feature that it was before.
And in fact, the sand that has depleted
does not have the same kind of stabilization
as it did previously.
This area was really important habitat
for nesting green, sea turtles.
In fact, something like 80 to 90% of green sea turtles
for the entire archipelago were thought to nest in that
one small Island.
So the future will tell what the implications
to green sea turtles are through the loss of that Island
but that's a significant loss of habitat
and the ranking was fair slash poor.
And I think we're onto a poll question.
Malia: Yes we are.
So now we have our first poll question
and here it is.
The question is, what is the name of the atoll
impacted by hurricane Walaka in 2018?
So select one of the following.
Was it Lalo, French Frigate Shoals,
Manawai, from Pearl and Hermes atoll,
or Holaniku Kure Atoll.
Go ahead and register your vote.
We've got a lot of you that are
registering your vote right now.
We have about 40%.
So give you about five to 10 more seconds
to see if we can get more of you.
If you need to pop out of your full screen mode
if you're having difficulty accessing it
pop out of your full screen mode, and you can
use your control panel to answer this question.
All right we have about 60% of you that voted.
And we're topping in, okay, here we go.
We're gonna close out this poll in a few seconds.
All right.
So I'm gonna share the results with you, Jon.
We have a lot of attentive people.
So 69% indicated that Lalo of French Frigate Shoals
was the atoll impacted by hurricane Walaka.
Good job to all of you.
-: Good job everyone.
Thank you, Malia.
Yeah, that's excellent and that's right.
In fact, hurricane Walaka didn't just impact
the land port portions of the atoll,
it impacted other portions.
And we'll talk about that soon.
So let me go to the next slide.
Okay.
So our assessments for water quality.
Here we're talking about nutrient levels.
We're talking about biological agents like bacteria
that would be in the nearshore waters
or the inland water bodies of features in the monument.
This was rated as good slash fair but with an unknown trend.
Primarily because there are really no sources
of additional nutrients and biological agents
to monument waters.
As you folks probably know the monument is not inhabited
and it doesn't have the same sort of watershed structures
that high islands, high populated islands like Owapu have.
The same types of nutrient inputs into the nearshore waters.
So water quality conditions are expected to be very good.
The exception being that there is a lot of Marine debris
that does wash into the monument
and that debris does degrade.
So it does release different types of materials.
And folks are doing a lot of research trying to understand
what that implication is.
Although, you know, it's not really feasible to monitor
the entire neutral water all of the monument.
So, and especially do that frequently.
So we don't have a good assessment on the trend
but generally we don't expect that it's changing much
because there are no sources of inputs.
Now onto contaminants.
Here we talk about contaminants when we're
talking about toxic materials.
Things like heavy metals, organic toxicants.
So this is rated as fair with a stable trend.
This is primarily on the basis that there
there still remains contaminants buried
in some of the sediments on some of the islands
in the monument.
Particularly Tern Island, Richard Purdue Shoals,
midway and green Island at Kure atoll.
And those are some historic activities,
primarily from military and by dumping equipment
that they have dumped and buried in sand there.
So over time, those materials erode and they leach
some of these different compounds.
If you see the image on the bottom
that's a map of Tern Island at French frigate Shoals
and you see the different colored dots indicate
the amount of intoxicant called PCBs.
If you look at those red dot areas that actually corresponds
to the photo above it, this is a photo of a historical dump
on that Island, which had been previously buried
by sediment and covered by a lot of other materials.
But hurricane Walaka came through the atoll
the French frigate Shoals
it uncovered portions of that dump.
So it's actually potentially exposing some of those
materials to the environment.
And that's something that's very troubling.
So the monument management board, is thinking about
that carefully and looking at solutions to address that.
In other places like Green Island and Kure Atoll
the state of Hawaii has been very effective
in being able to remediate and remove a lot of contaminants
from the soil.
Okay, let's talk about marine biodiversity.
So that assessment is rated as good
with a non-changing trend.
When we talk about biodiversity
there's several different things we can think of.
The number of species, the number of individuals of species,
and in our case a very special aspect called endemism.
So that's where there's, endemism means there's species
only live in one location and not others.
That's just one of the aspects that make the monument
so much more special.
And the photos you see here are photos of a lot of
endemic fish and two endemic and new species plants
that were discovered recently.
It's not something that's feasible to assess every year
for a ten year cycle, like what we were looking at.
So we don't have really an understanding of the trend
but the diversity that as it is now is expected to be
as it was before humans got there.
That's the expert opinion on that.
And then for Marine non-indigenous species.
So that was rated as fair with a stable trend.
Prior to 2019 there were known to be something like
64 species of introduced species in the monument waters.
None of them were thought to have severely impacted
native species or habitats until our research team
got to Pearl and Hermes Atoll in 2019.
And what they found was this red algae.
So you see these two photos here on the right
the red algae was covering just football field size swaths
of the reef all across the atoll.
It was really shocking and alarming.
You see the photo on the bottom that algae is growing
from within the coral branches,
and it grows over the coral and kills the coral.
This species is having a significant effect
at Pearl and Hermes atoll.
And that's some of the basis for the rating of fair.
Fortunately, for now it's contained just to that atoll
and puzzlingly enough we don't know what the origin
of that species is.
We don't know if it's a native species that went crazy
or if it's a species that was introduced
and no one had been able to notice it until 2019.
So we'll be having talks on both of these topics
in the following two months.
Keep your eyes peeled for announcements on those
and you'll get a lot more detail.
Okay for terrestrial bio-diversity
and terrestrial non-indigenous species.
These two are highly linked.
And the reason why is because of the history of the place.
So before the monument was established
and all of the conservation and bio security measures
were put in place, human access to this place
actually resulted in the introduction
of a lot of plant species.
One of those species you see here in the middle photo
is called Grabasina with the yellow flowers.
And that species was highly invasive.
It's growing wildly out of control and just swallowing up
native habitats, turning it into something else.
These are photos from Kure atoll
and the state of Hawaii does a lot of on the ground
restoration and management of that atoll.
So they were able to remove a lot of these invasive plants
and that's opened up space for native plants
and native biodiversity to come back and to thrive.
So those hands-on restoration efforts
had been highly successful in improving the biodiversity
and reducing non-indigenous species.
In fact, some of these plants actually preclude even animals
like albatross from using some of those spaces.
So a lot of hard work has gone into eradicating those
and it's been highly successful.
Okay Hawaiian monk seals.
So those were rated as fair slash poor
with an increasing trend.
That's mostly on the basis that Hawaiian monk seal
populations have been declining over time,
Not showing in the graph on the bottom,
the past few years, the population actually
has been increasing.
So that's the basis for the improvements.
Also monk seals have been having better survival rates
due to some of the intervention efforts
of the national Marine fishery service.
They provide veterinary care for seals.
They track them.
They help address some behavioral issues with the seals
and eliminate some potential entrapment hazards for them.
So a lot of the work that they've done
has improved the condition of seals and it's continuing.
Green turtles.
So these were rated as good slash fair
with an increasing trend.
You see the image on the bottom, our main indicator there
is the number of green turtle nests.
So you see over time, they're generally increasing.
You do see a Sawtooth pattern there with some periods
having more than others, but that's a natural function
of the reproductive biology of these turtles.
So the data goes up to 2018, and as of then
it's expected to have an increasing trend.
So turtles were at that point expected to be doing well.
Now, remember I mentioned that French frigate Shoals
hurricane Walaka that came through and decimated
some of the most important nesting habitats for them.
We still don't have a good understanding
of what the long-term implications are
to green sea turtle populations as a whole,
but the national Marine fishery service is working hard
to try to understand that.
Okay, corals.
So I wanted to spend a little bit more time
talking about corals.
One of the things that we learned when we talked
with experts about trying to assess the status of corals
is an appreciation for the fact
that each of these Island reef areas are very distinct
and very different from one another.
The monument is quite large and it lends quite a different
latitudinal gradient.
So water is in the Southwest, sorry, sorry.
South East are much warmer and have not as
have a little bit more mild winter conditions.
Waters in the Northwest are much cooler
and have a lot harsher winter conditions with waves.
And so the environment they're in actually structured
the type of carrying capacity that they have
for corals to grow.
So we were advised to do individual assessments
and we did them.
You'll see the table here on the upper right,
that indicates what the different status and trends are
for each of these areas.
You don't need to look too hard at this table
because we're gonna go through
each of these areas individually.
We also tried our best to give an overall assessment
for all the coral areas.
And that assessment was fair with a declining trend.
And that's primarily on the basis of a few things.
In these past 10 years we've seen the monument
have experienced at least floor mass bleaching events.
Now bleaching events, coral bleaching is when
the temperature gets so high that the coral animal
is stressed and it loses its color and its symbiotic algae.
And that's very, that's very bad for the coral.
The coral could die if it stays without that algae
for too long.
See photos of coral bleaching here on the left
and on the bottom.
You'll also see some Marine debris fishing nets
that drift in and some of the reefs up there.
So there are several different stressors
that affect corals broadly in the monument.
However, these bleaching events are pretty significant.
And then you see the image on the bottom,
that's a figure showing the percent coral cover
at each location over time.
We were highly encouraged to do these assessments
to assess each place to itself over time
instead of compare one weed to another.
And so that's what we've done here.
And you see it a different percentage
of coral cover over time.
It's varied somewhat by each year
but generally there's been less coral cover found
over these time periods that you'll see here.
Okay another question.
Malia: Okay, so let's see who is paying attention.
Our second poll.
How many mass coral bleaching events have occurred
in Papahanaumokuakea between 2008 and 2019?
So go ahead and register your vote.
The selections are two, three, four, or five.
How many coral bleaching events have occurred?
All right.
We got lots of you voting.
Half of you voted so far, we'll leave about
five more seconds and all right,
I'm gonna close out the poll
and let's see what the results are.
Okay.
So here's a good, we've got a nice
a nice people have 61% of you have said
four mass coral bleaching events.
So you are absolutely correct and were paying attention.
So we're back to you, Jon.
-: Excellent thank you, Malia and well done everyone else.
You know, out of this 10 year period that's 40% of the time
of their summers have they experienced coral bleaching
and that's significant corals.
That stress can be cumulative.
So that's not, that's not good.
And honestly, when we're worried about climate change
that's something that we really have to look at carefully.
Okay let's talk about each of these areas independently.
So French Frigate Shoals, and you can see here on the map
it's circled in red, you see on the bottom
there's a satellite image of the atoll.
This is was ranked as good slash fair
with a declining trend.
And that's primarily on the basis
that for most of this time period,
corals there were thought to be in pretty good condition.
Our team was alarmed when they went there to research,
do research in 2019.
You might see the photo in the bottom left,
and you may recognize it from other places.
It's often used by people around the world to embody
what a pristine coral reef might look like.
And that's what that reef used to look like.
It was called rapture reef on the atoll.
When our team got there expecting to see the photo
on the left, what they found was the photo in the center.
They found that the coral was not there,
the fish was not there become piles of rubble and sediment
and it looks like they found a shark too.
What we think happened is hurricane Walaka
which came through the atoll, severely damaged this reef.
And that's a huge, huge loss for the system
because that was a very extensive reef.
It had some of the most unique assemblages
of coral and monument.
So we're really quite upset about that.
That in addition to the additional coral bleaching
that occurs we decided to give it a declining trend.
However we haven't been able to continue
serving the entire atoll, so we're not sure
what the extent of the full damage is.
But we're gonna continue trying to understand
that into the next few years.
Okay Maro Reef.
So you see that circled in red.
This is one of the reef systems that's not associated
with an Island.
It's out, it's sort of exposed to the elements.
That's rated as good slash fair with a stable trend.
The team has only been able to survey there,
I think two of those 10 years,
two years out of those 10 years.
But the data that they had indicated no real coral mortality
or death as a result of any of the mass bleaching events
or any other alarming issues.
So it's been rated as good slash fair.
Okay Laysan.
So this is an Island surrounded by sea floor
that's largely flat and pavement.
And that pavement is not conducive to the development
of extensive coral reefs.
So generally there's fairly low coral cover
at least compared to other islands
but the coral that are there
as of the last data collection looked like
they were in fairly good condition.
Laysan has been exposed to coral bleaching in the past
but it had extensive die-offs of coral
having been observed or expected.
So it was given this rating of good slash fair.
Okay Lisianski.
So this is an area with, you see the Island
in the photo on the bottom, right?
And then you can see this lighter blue coloration
in the water.
This has a large reef structure that surrounds that Island.
And it goes further to the South
to a feature called nibashul.
There's a lot of coral habitat there
and impacts to this habitat have varied
by depth and by actual location around the area.
The overall assessment though, was for this fair
with a declining trend.
And that's primarily on the basis of the fact that
these reefs at Lisianski suffered a severe
coral bleaching events in 2014.
You see this image on the left,
this image on the upper left,
it looks a little blue and purple,
that's actually live coral.
You see that year after that in 2015,
that's the same location you see it looks brown,
that's because that coral had bleached and died.
And the Brown is probably some turf algae
that's growing on top of it.
And then they surveyed it, the team survey did again in 2016
and the coral has still not recovered,
but you may notice some green algae spreading
across the reef there.
So not only has that coral not recovered
that substrate is actually being covered with algae.
So the condition of that location was rated as fair
with a declining trend.
Pearl and Hermes atoll, that was rated as fair slash poor
with a declining trend.
Prior to 2019, the reef seemed to be
in fairly good condition.
Remember when I said our team got there to do research
in 2019, they found this red alga covering the reef.
So the photo on the top is what it would look like
without the algae but on the bottom is what it looks like
with the algae colonizing that.
And it's this algae has spread across the entire atoll.
We have detailed plans to continue researching this
and we've developed strict bio security protocols
to prevent that species of algae from getting
out of the atoll and transport it to another location.
The current state of that atoll is rated
as fair slash poor because of the significant impacts
from the algae.
Midway.
So midway was rated fair slash poor with a stable trend.
Midway is one of the two Northern most reef areas
in the monument.
The waters are cold.
The weather, winter weather at least is especially harsh,
and it's not conducive to the growth of lots of coral
and high coral cover.
Adding to that past military activities there resulted in
some damage to corals in the past as well as several years
worth of coral bleaching.
So those corals haven't recovered from those past events
which happened before this 11 year period.
So the state of those corals are fair slash poor
but they're not expected to have to be changing.
The coral that are there seem to be a fairly stable.
And then Kure.
So Kure was rated as fair slash poor
with the stable trend as well.
This is the Northern most reef area in the monument.
Waters are cool.
Winter weather is harsh on top of that
there were bleaching events.
I think it was 2002 that actually resulted
in mortality of some of the corals.
And this is a typical reef scene that you would see there.
So the conditions that Kure and Midway are at
aren't highly conducive to the growth of new coral
at least rapid growth
and the rapid colonization by new coral juveniles or larvae
but the coral that are there seem to be hanging on
and doing fine.
And then there's another group of islands that
I didn't talk about.
Nihoa, Mokumanamana, and Gardner.
You see Nihoa in the center photo, Mokumanamana on the right
and Gardner on the bottom.
These are areas that actually lack a lot of
monitoring data for this time period.
So experts felt that we weren't able to determine
what the condition or trends were.
A couple of things about these locations
while there are coral reefs surrounding these islands
they're not as extensive as some of the others
that we just talked about.
And the, the way that these islands are positioned
they experience harsh open ocean conditions.
So it's very challenging to plan
and actually execute diving research
around these areas to be able to collect enough data
to make an assessment.
But it is flagged as a gap for us,
and it is something that the monument management
board is looking at and thinking about.
It looks like we are at another question.
Malia: Okay, friends, here we go to our third poll.
So the question is which reef has been
significantly impacted by a nuisance alga
and was discovered in 2019?
So your selections are Lalo or French Frigate Shoals,
Manawai, or Pearl and Hermes atoll.
Kuaihelani or Midway atoll
or Holaniku or Kure atoll.
Go ahead and register your vote.
Oh, I see a lot of you are voting.
We've got about half of you so far.
Don't forget to pop out if you're in full screen mode
and we'll give you about five more seconds.
Lalo, Manawai, Kiaihelani, or Holaniku.
All right, so I'm gonna close the poll now
and let's see what our results are.
All right.
So we've got 60% of you indicate that Manawai,
or Pearl and Hermes atoll.
Good job.
-: Excellent, thank you, Malia.
And good job listening everybody.
That's exactly right, Pearl and Hermes was the atoll
where that algae is and hopefully still remains.
We'll be having a talk in about two months by
Brian Hawk talking about that and about other issues
related to Marine bio security in the monument.
So please keep your eyes peeled for those announcements.
Okay let's move on.
So coral reef fish.
Those were assessed was good with a stable trend.
That's mostly on the basis that there's
very very high fish biomass
and very good fish diversity in the monument.
You might see the bar chart on the bottom
indicate how much fish biomass are each
of these different islands.
To give you a frame of reference,
a place like the populated main Hawaiian islands
at most might have 50 grams per meter squared of fish
at the highest.
So some of these locations have two to three times
the amount of fish at them compared to
the most fish that there might be
in the main Hawaiian islands.
Those trends have been stable over time.
Unfortunately, since there are no fishing pressures
on the fish there, they're doing excellent.
Okay, so this group we're calling
historically targeted species.
This is a group of species that were historically harvested
before the monument protections were put in place.
We're talking about two species of lobster,
the black Pearl oyster on the bottom right,
and then multiple species of autumn fish.
So we did do individual assessments for each of them
and they varied a little bit.
The main takeaway from that is that
the data available actually is not very recent.
The most recent data available sort of ends
at the beginning of our timeframe that we're assessing.
So we know that there's a lack of data
for a more recent time frames for these.
But those data that were most recent indicated that
the black Pearl oyster and both species of lobsters
had not recovered to their pre harvesting levels.
It did indicate that the bottom fish levels were doing well.
So we did an overall assessment of this entire group
and it was assessed as fair, but with an unknown trend
because we don't have a lot of temporal data
to be able to identify a trend.
Okay moving on to deep sea corals.
So these were rated as good with a non changing trend.
And these are corals in the deep deep sea,
like hundreds and thousands of feet deep.
They're rated as good mostly because they're fairly isolated
and they don't have a lot of human related impacts to them.
There are may be some climate change impacts
that they're highly vulnerable to, but as of yet,
there's no signs of impacts to them.
We were not able to identify a trend mostly
because there are not temporal surveys,
surveys that are correct the same locations.
So we're not able to actually monitor a place over time.
Typically research is exploratory and the places
largest in the monument, there's a lot of places to explore.
So we don't have those data to be able to identify a trend.
For seabirds, here we're mostly talking about two species
and we have the lace non albatross
and the black-footed albatross.
And these were rated as good slash fair
with a stable trend.
And these are mostly based on population models,
which I'm not, I don't have the slide here for you.
Previously these populations have been heavily impacted
by things like egg harvesting and severe by catch
from fisheries activities.
And those numbers had decreased over time
but the population has increased
and remain stable for at least this period of time.
Sea birds have other stressors that affect them
in the monument for example, the 2011 to OCO earthquake
in Japan and the caused a tsunami
which resulted in the loss of several nesting birds
and currently on Midway birds are threatened by mice
which have shifted their behavior to be, to predate
to predate and actually eat the sea birds
as they're nesting.
There's a lot to talk about there if you're interested,
there's some discussion in the report.
And then for endemic land plants we have poor.
We have a rating of poor with an unknown trend.
Of the 25 or so species of land plants in the monument
at least five of them are endangered endemic.
Those plants actually have fairly depressed
population levels and the prospects for their recovery
are uncertain.
So they were rated as poor condition.
But the US fish and wildlife service
in the state of Hawaii are working hard on
on addressing that and promoting the recovery
of these species by planting them and preserving them.
So for endemic land birds, we're talking about
four species here.
Starting on the right, we're talking about
the lace duck.
Underneath it is the lace and fish.
And then on the middle, we have the Nihoa Miller bird.
And on the bottom, the Nihoa fish.
Each of these animals were rated independently
and their conditions varied somewhat
with the Lakeside duck doing better than other species.
The overall assessment was fair slash poor
with an unknown trend on the basis that
I think these are all endangered species
and the populations are depressed
from what they were previously.
But again, the fish and wildlife service is working
very hard to promote the recovery
of all of these species.
And then our final set of assessments,
heritage resources.
So I mentioned maritime resources,
we were talking about those, which are exposed to conditions
in the water historic resources are those on land.
And we decided to rate them separately
because they experience different environmental impacts
but the ratings actually turned out to be the same.
So the ratings are fair with a declining trend.
And that's primarily on the basis that these are
finite resources.
A lot of them are metal and they're highly vulnerable
to erosion and corrosion, and they never improve over time.
They only decrease in their physical condition over time.
Now it's important to note here that
we made an important distinction on the physical condition
of these artifacts and resources
and not the actual intangible values
of their educational value or historical value.
So those are the ratings for those.
We also assessed native Hawaiian archeological resources
and these are mostly found on the islands of Nihoa
and Mokumanamana.
This rating was good slash fair with an unknown trend.
And that's mostly on the basis that these resources
have been there for quite a long time.
Most of them are made out of stone.
They're highly robust, and they appear to be in
as good of condition as we can assess.
There is some amount of erosion that occurs,
but unfortunately research and monitoring,
hasn't been able to fully quantify that
and monitor that occurrence over time.
So we don't have a trend assessed for that.
And I think we have our last question.
Malia: We do.
All right.
So here we go.
Which islands have the most native
Hawaiian cultural artifacts?
Select one of the following.
Is it Lalo, French frigate Shoals,
Manawai Pearl and Hermes atoll,
Nihoa and Mokuamanamana or Holaniku or Kure atoll.
Go ahead and register your vote.
And we are about 50% of you have voted.
We'll give you another five seconds
before I close out the poll.
Which islands have the most native Hawaiian
cultural artifacts?
All right.
And I'm gonna close this out.
And let's share those results with you, Jon.
Oh, people were definitely paying attention.
Nihoa and Mokuamanamana 89% of you.
Very well done.
-: Very good.
Thank you, Malia.
Thanks everybody for listening
and paying such good attention.
So let's wrap up what we've learned
on the summary of the state of these different resources.
Each of these rectangles you see here represents
one of the assessments that we made.
And as you can tell on the whole most of these resources
are in good or good slash fair to fair condition.
One of the most important takeaways that I got
from this exercise was that I learned those pressures
which are affecting the state of the resources
are largely external.
So it's not like there are a lot of people
going through stepping on corals or people extracting
species that are causing problem.
These are things that were set in place
before the monument protections were put in place
like contaminants buried in the soil
or harvesting of these various species
or introduction of introduced species.
And then also things related to climate and climate change,
you know increases in water temperature,
increased amounts of weather events,
severe weather events, things like that.
And I think that's a Testament to the type of
management responses that the agencies have been
having been putting in place.
So just a quick mention on that.
One of the, these are some of the major aspects
of our management that prevents other human induce stressors
from impacting the resources.
One of them, one of the most obvious
is the rigorous permitting process.
Any activity that's happens in the monument
has to be permitted and there are some that can,
can not even be permitted.
So by permitting, we actually have a good understanding
of what type of projects might happen in the monument.
What types of impacts those projects might have.
And we can offer best management practices
to folks who are doing their work to help minimize
any of those problems.
We have very stringent bio security protocols.
So folks that go to any of the land portions
in the monument might be asked to bring only new clothes.
So they're not transporting seeds
or other types of species to those areas.
We have a requirements to have vessels
have their holes inspected
or invasive species attached to their holes.
And if they are found to have too many species
on them, they will be required to have a cleaning
or they're not allowed to go to the monument.
There's no commercial fishing allowed.
So the fish populations don't have that pressure
and they're doing excellent.
Monument has no discharge zones designated.
So vessels that go there aren't allowed to discharge
any of their waste on the coral reefs
that would input nutrients or other types of contaminants.
The area is designated as a particularly
sensitive sea area internationally.
You see the map on the right shows, these Brown areas.
Those are corridors that vessels are required
to go through when they're transiting
through this area and the areas that are hatched
they're not allowed to go there.
So by preventing them getting close
to sensitive areas like coral reefs
we reduce the opportunities for vessel groundings
to occur there.
There are a suite of other ongoing conservation measures
as well.
I mentioned some like the active removal
of invasive species, and veterinary care
to endangered monk seals, things like that.
And then we also continue our documentation
of heritage resources so that we know where they are.
And if people are doing projects and locations near there
we can give the best advice on how to minimize
or reduce impacts from their project to those artifacts.
And then two last things I wanted to again, share where
you can access the report, papahanaumokuakea.gov.
We have a nice web story up there that summarizes
some of the findings as well as a nice
eight pager document you can download.
If you don't have time to go through the 200 plus pages
in the report itself.
And then I just wanna finish by thanking everyone
who worked on this.
We had our 6 person editorial team, you know,
our 40 some subject matter experts, all of our other
supporting contributors.
And then of course the monument management board
for making this a priority for us to complete.
So with that, I think I'm done.
And if there's time for questions, I'm happy to take some
Andy: (foreign language) Jon, I think Justin's got one
or two questions we have time for maybe one or two.
-: Yeah okay.
So there are a lot just rolling in while I'm looking,
I did, there was one on T update.
I'm wondering if they were seeing throughout
the Northwestern Hawaiian islands.
-: That's a good question to Tapee
is in the Northwestern Hawaiian islands.
They haven't been recorded
to the entire of the Northwestern Hawaiian islands.
I believe they've been observed somewhere
about midway up midway through the monuments.
I don't remember exactly which area is the furthest extent
but they have been seen in the monument yes.
-: And I'm sorry folks, there's so many rolling
in one that's catching my eye.
Did hurricane Walaka hit any other islands
other than French Brigid Shoals in Papahanaumokuakea?
And did it affect any of the main Hawaiian islands?
-: I don't believe it affected the main Hawaiian islands.
I'm not sure I've been, I've mostly been focusing on
its impacts to the monument.
Fortunately it did not seem to impact severely
any other locations other than French frigate Shoals.
In fact, the eye of the hurricane went directly
through the atoll as a category three or four hurricane.
So it was quite severe, unfortunately, that it was there
because French British shows has some of the most
sensitive habitats and important habitats in the monument.
But fortunately it didn't affect any of the other areas
as far as I know.
-: We're getting a lot of questions on the alga
which I believe is going to be detailed in an upcoming talk.
Is that correct?
-: That's right.
Brian Hawk is gonna be talking about that
and other bio security issues in the monument in
I think March the third Thursday in March.
-: Great, I better wrap it up.
-: Go ahead, Andy.
-: Yeah thank you everybody
for all your great questions and engagement.
We will do a follow-up with Jon with your questions
and send him the questions that we weren't able to answer
which were most of them.
But thank you, Jon so very much
you can turn off your webcam now.
Thank you for that wonderful presentation.
And let me go over a few closing slides here.
So we do archive all these presentations
and the archive link is posted here on the slide.
So you can view all of our wonderful presentations
that we've done in the past.
And this one will also be posted there in a few weeks.
Also, you will receive a certificate of attendance
for one hour of professional development
for attending this workshop,
of attending this presentation.
Thank you very much.
And also we get some great talks coming up.
So if you're not familiar with Awahu
there's a place there called Hanauma Bay
and that's a nature preserve
and they have lectures and we are featured for February.
So we have, and it's also Hawaiian language month.
So we are featured at Hanauma Bay for several lectures.
And the link to that site had been posted
in the chat earlier and has also at the bottom of the slide.
So please join us.
Those are Thursdays 6:30 Hawaii standard time.
And also next month we have our resident research rockstar
Randy Kosaki, who's our research coordinator
for Papahanaumokuakea and he'll be giving a great talk
about Marine biodiversity in Papahanaumokuakea
and some of the really cool research methods they use
to dive to great depths a few hundred several
well for 300 feet plus to look at some of the
unique species down there and many of the endemic species
that Jon mentioned in his presentation.
So please sign up for that.
That's February 18th, same time as this one.
So a third Thursday.
And also please fill out the survey when you close out
we really use this information to improve our talks,
improve our presentations
and to also let know our leadership,
how valued these are.
So please fill out the learning survey at the end.
And thank you so very much for joining us,
and be safe and look forward to seeing you next time.
Aloha.