The Honouliuli Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) located in Ewa, Oahu, Hawaii, near Barbers Point (Kalaeloa) has been in operation since 1982. It releases approximately 22 mgd (0.96 m3/s) of primary treated sewage through a 2,670-m pipe at a depth of 61 m offshore of Ewa Beach, Oahu. A controversy had arisen in the early 1990s regarding the impact that sewage effluent from the Honouliuli WWTP may have on inshore coral reef ecosystem. Accordingly, in 1991 this monitoring program commenced in an attempt to quantitatively ascertain the impacts that may be occurring, with annual surveys continuing to the present (2010). It is anticipated the program will continue for many years. The overall survey program includes in situ observations of fish and coral assemblages as well as benthic sampling of sediment chemistry and biota within the sediments. Select water column measurements have also been made such as temperature, salinity, and turbidity. This dataset provides only the fish census from annual quantitative monitoring of shallow marine communities inshore of the Barbers Point Ocean Outfall located in 61 m of water offshore of Ewa Beach, Oahu, Hawaii. NODC Accession 0000174 has the complete set of survey data (coral, fish, benthos, and water column) for annual surveys of 1991-1999. The fish data in 0000174 only provide counts and cumulative biomass. The set presented in the 2011 update (1991-2010) includes fish counts, lengths, and biomass of each species. The other parameters (corals, benthos) for 2000-2010 will be released by the Water Resources Research Center separately.
Determine the status of the marine resources in the vicinity of the discharge in an effort to quantitatively ascertain if any impacts are occurring to the coral reef biota.
NOAASupplemental:Entry_ID: Unknown Sensor_Name: SCUBA Project_Campaign:Benthic Studies Barbers Pt Outfall Originating_Center: Water Resources Research Center, Univ. Hawaii Storage_Medium: MS 2007 Excel Reference: None Online_size: 1,882 kbytes
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Dataset credit required
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Department of Environmental Services, City and County of Honolulu, Water Resources Research Center, University Of Hawaii at Manoa, Environmental Assessment, LLC
see methodology
quality control completed
METHODOLOGY: Strategy: --------- Marine environmental surveys are usually performed to evaluate the feasibility of, and ecosystem response to, specific proposed activities. Appropriate survey methodologies reflect the nature of the proposed action(s). An action that may have an acute impact (such as channel dredging) requires a survey designed to determine the route of least harm and the projected rate and degree of ecosystem recovery. Impacts that are more chronic or progressive require different strategies for measurement. Management of chronic stress to a marine ecosystem requires identification of system perturbations that exceed boundaries of natural fluctuations. Thus a thorough understanding of normal ecosystem variability is required in order to separate the impact signal from background noise. The impacts confronting the marine ecosystem offshore of Ewa Beach are most probably those associated with chronic or progressive stresses. Because of the proximity of the population center and industry to the east, marine communities fronting Ewa Beach are probably subjected to a wide array of impacts. Thus a sampling strategy must attempt to separate impacts due to wastewater treatment plant effluent on coral reef communities located at some distance shoreward from a host of other possible perturbations originating in the Honolulu and Pearl Harbor areas. The waters fronting Ewa Beach, into which the deep-ocean outfall discharges, can be considered in terms of gradients. There are numerous gradients due to point-source and nonpoint-source (such as storm drains and streams) inputs that are occurring to the east. Because many of these inputs have probably been occurring for a considerable period of time, the species composition and functional relationships of the benthic and fish communities at any given location in the waters offshore of Ewa Beach are those that have evolved under the influence of these ongoing perturbations. As noted above, if impacts are occurring in the shallow marine communities off Ewa Beach because of effluent discharged from the deep-ocean outfall, they are probably chronic in nature which would probably manifest themselves as a slow decline in the communities so impacted. Gradients of stress or impact should be evident with distance from impact source(s). Thus, to quantitatively define these impacts, one should monitor these communities through time in areas suspected of being impacted, as well as in similar communities at varying distances away from the suspected source(s). This rationale has been used in developing the sampling strategy for this study. Materials and methods: ---------------------- The quantitative sampling of macrofauna of marine communities presents a number of problems, many of which are related to the scale on which one wishes to quantitatively enumerate organism abundance. Marine communities in the waters offshore of Ewa Beach may be spatially defined in a range of a few hundred square centimeters (such as the community residing in a Pocillopora meandrina coral head) to many hectares (such as areas which are covered by major biotopes). Because considerable interest focuses on visually dominant corals, diurnally exposed macroinvertebrates, and fishes, we designed a sampling program to delineate changes that may be occurring in communities at this scale. Fish abundance and diversity is often related to small-scale topographical relief over short linear distances. A long transect may bisect a number of topographical features (e.g., coral mounds, sand flats, and algal beds), thus sampling more than one community and obscuring distinctive features of individual communities. To alleviate this problem, a short transect (20 m in length), which has proven adequate for sampling many Hawaii benthic communities (see Brock 1982; Brock and Norris 1989), was used. Information is collected at each transect location using methods including a visual assessment of fishes, benthic photo-quadrats and quadrats for field appraisals of cover estimates by sessile forms (e.g., algae, corals, and colonial invertebrates), and counting of diurnally exposed motile macroinvertebrates along the transect line. Fish censuses are conducted over a 4 m x 20 m corridor (the permanent transect line). All fishes within this area to the water's surface are counted. A single diver equipped with scuba, slate, and pencil enters the water, then counts and records all fishes in the prescribed area (method modified from Brock 1954). Besides counting the individuals of all fishes seen, the length of each is estimated for later use in the determination of fish standing crop using linear regression techniques (Ricker 1975). Species- specific regression coefficients have been developed over the last 30 years by the author and others at the University of Hawaii, the Naval Undersea Center (see Evans 1974), and the Hawaii Division of Aquatic Resources from weight and body measurements of captured fishes; for many species, the coefficients have been developed using sample sizes in excess of a hundred individuals. The same individual (the author) performs all fish censuses to keep any bias relatively constant between counts and stations. Besides divers frightening wary fishes, other problems with the visual census technique include underestimating the size of cryptic species such as moray eels (family Muraenidae) and nocturnal species such as squirrelfishes (family Holocentridae) and bigeyes or aweoweo (family Priacanthidae). This problem is compounded in areas of high relief and coral coverage that afford numerous shelter sites. Species lists and abundance estimates are more accurate for areas of low relief, although some fishes with cryptic habits or protective coloration, such as scorpionfishes or nohu (family Scorpaenidae) and flatfishes (family Bothidae), might still be missed. Another problem is the reduced effectiveness of the visual census technique in turbid water. This is compounded by the difficulty of counting fishes that move quickly or are very numerous. Additionally, bias related to the experience of the census taker should be considered in making comparisons between surveys. Despite these problems, the visual census technique carried out by divers is probably the most accurate nondestructive assessment method currently available for counting diurnally active fishes (Brock 1982). INSTRUMENT TYPES: -SCUBA -Visual census REFERENCES: The complete set of project reports can be acquired from the University of Hawaii Water Resources Research Center web site: http://www.wrrc.hawaii.edu/publication/project_report/PRtitle.html Alevizon, W., R. Richardson, P. Pitts, and G. Serviss. 1985. Coral zonation and patterns of community structure in Bahamian reef fishes. Bull. Mar. Sci. 36:304-318. Anderson, G.R.V., A.H. Ehrlich, P.R. Ehrlich, J.D. Roughgarden, B.C. Russell, and F.H. Talbot. 1981. The community structure of coral reef fishes. Am. Nat. 117:476-495. Bathen, K.H. 1978. Circulation atlas for Oahu, Hawaii. Sea Grant Misc. Rep. UNIHI- SEAGRANT-MR-78-05, University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program, Honolulu. 94 pp. Brock, R.E. 1982. A critique on the visual census method for assessing coral reef fish populations. Bull. Mar. Sci. 32:269-276. Brock, R.E., C. Lewis, and R.C. Wass. 1979. Stability and structure of a fish community on a coral patch reef in Hawaii. Mar. Biol. 54:281-292. Brock, R.E., and J.E. Norris. 1989. An analysis of the efficacy of four artificial reef designs in tropical waters. Bull. Mar. Sci. 44:934-941. Brock, V.E. 1954. A preliminary report on a method of estimating reef fish populations. J. Wildlife Mgmt. 18:297-308. Brock, R.E., 2001. Community structure of fish and macrobenthos at selected shallow-water sites in relation to the Barbers Point Ocean Outfall, 2000. Project Report PR-2001-07, Water Resources Research Center, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822. 50 pp. Brock, R.E., 2008. Community Structure of Fish and Macrobenthos at Selected Shallow-Water Sites in Relation to the Barbers Point Ocean Outfall, O'ahu, Hawai'i, May 2008. Project Report PR-2009-02. Water Resources Research Center, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, 65 pp. Connell, J. 1978. Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs. Science 199:1302- 1310. Dollar, S.J. 1982. Wave stress and coral community structure in Hawaii. Coral Reefs 1:71-81. Eckert, G.J. 1985. Settlement of coral reef fishes to different natural substrata and at different depths. Proc. 5th Int. Coral Reef Congr. 5:385-390. Evans, E.C. (editor). 1974. Pearl Harbor biological survey final report. Report No. NUC-TN-1128, Naval Undersea Center, Hawaii Laboratory. Gladfelter, W.B., and E.H. Gladfelter. 1978. Fish community structure as a function of habitat structure on West Indian patch reefs. Rev. Biol. Trop. 26(Supplement 1):65-84. Goldman, B., and F.H. Talbot. 1975. Aspects of the ecology of coral reef fishes. In Biology and Geology of Coral Reefs, Vol. III, Biology 2, ed. O.A. Jones and R. Endean, pp. 124-154. New York: Academic Press. Grigg, R. 1983. Community structure, succession and development of coral reefs in Hawaii. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 11:1-14. Grigg, R., and J. Maragos. 1974. Recolonization of hermatypic corals on submerged lava flows in Hawaii. Ecology 55:387-395. Hamilton, P., J. Singer, and E. Waddell. 1995. Ocean current measurements. Project MB- 6 (38 pp. + 2 appendixes) in Mamala Bay study final report, vol. I. Prepared by Mamala Bay Study Commission, Honolulu. Paginated by sections. Highsmith, R.C. 1982. Reproduction by fragmentation in corals. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 7:207-226. Laevastu, T., D.E. Avery, and D.C. Cox. 1964. Coastal currents and sewage disposal in the Hawaiian Islands. HIG-64-1, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, University of Hawaii, Honolulu. 101 pp. Ogden, J.C., and J.P. Ebersole. 1981. Scale and community structure of coral reef fishes: A long-term study of a large artificial reef. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 4:97-104. Ricker, W.E. 1975. Computation and interpretation of biological statistics of fish populations. Bull. Fish. Res. Bd. Canada 191. 382 pp. Sale, P.J. 1977. Maintenance of high diversity in coral reef fish communities. Am. Nat. 111:337-359. Shulman, M.J. 1984. Resource limitation and recruitment patterns in a coral reef fish assemblage. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol. 74:85-109. Shulman, M.J., J.C. Ogden, J.P. Ebersole, W.N. McFarland, S.L. Miller, and N.G. Wolf. 1983. Priority effects in the recruitment of juvenile coral reef fishes. Ecology 64:1508-1513. Siegel, S. 1956. Nonparametric statistics for the behavioral sciences. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co. 312 pp. Sokal, R.R., and F.J. Rohlf. 1995. Biometry: The principles and practice of statistics in biological research. 3d edition. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co. 887 pp. Walsh, W.J. 1983. Stability of a coral reef fish community following a catastrophic storm. Coral Reefs 2:49-63. Walsh, W.J. 1985. Reef fish community dynamics on small artificial reefs: The influence of isolation, habitat structure, and biogeography. Bull. Mar. Sci. 36:357-376. Woodley, J.D., and 19 others. 1981. Hurricane Allen's impact on Jamaican coral reefs. Science 214:749-755.
FILE DESCRIPTION AND FORMATS: Directory data/0-data Contains the files/directories as provided by the contributor File: BARBERSPT.xlsx Format: MS Excel 2007 Content: Fish Census Description: Column Comment 1 The old Hawaii Coastal Zone Data Bank Number specific to each species 2 The species censused 3 The date of the census 4 The transect number (as given in the Water Resources Research Center reports covering our findings), 5 The lengths (mm) of each fish seen 6 The number of individuals seen 7 The total estimated weight (grams) of all individuals of that species seen having a given length. Weight data are derived from estimated lengths made in the field using regression techniques. Directory data/1-data Contains the files/directories created by NODC File: BARBERSPT.csv Format: MS Excel 2007, comma-separated version, ASCII text Content: Fish Census Description: as BARBERSPT.xlsx
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