Kealia Pond

We are concerned with two birds. These birds are the Hawaiian Stilt and the Hawaiian Coot. The major problem is the Bulrush. This plant is bad because it grows too thick and big for our native birds to nest and grow in. In result, it is ruining their natural habitat.

Our study is significant because we are trying to preserve our native bird's natural habitat.

We did out study by going to Kealia Pond in groups of five. When we get there, we set up a one by one meter study area around a specific spot of Bulrush, and then we find the salinity, water temperature, air temperature, plant height, the pH, turbidity, weather conditions, water depth, density and then we make any comments on anything interesting about the Bulrush. Once we got all of the data, each group was assigned a certain job, the jobs were to cut, spray, and cut and spray the Bulrush. After waiting a few weeks, we return to Kealia pond to see the results of our test. Once again we recorded all of the same data as we did last time. Once we got our two tables of data completed, we compared them to see which technique of killing the Bulrush is most affective.

After we finished our studies, we found out that the most affective way of killing Bulrush is to cut it beneath the water level with 90 Bulrush dead out of 120 total. The problem with this technique is that it is the most labor intensive out of the three. The second most affective technique used to kill Bulrush is to spray the seed pods on the top of the Bulrush. The results for this technique was 80 killed out of 120. This technique is by far the least labor intensive of the three methods. Our least affective technique was the cut and spray. We would cut the stock about hip height then we would spray all of the Bulrush we cut with herbicide. This method was slightly labor intensive and killed only 50 percent of the Bulrush, the rest were perfectly fine. If we ever decided to take action against the Bulrush, we would probably use the spray technique because it is affective in killing the Bulrush, its not labor intensive, and it kills the seeds attached to each Bulrush preventing it the chance to regrow.

Reef Survey Blog Entry

What is REEF?


REEF is basically a volunteery service for citizens to go out into the ocean and survey what they saw. The mission of REEF is to conserve the marine environment and to educate marine enthusiasts so that they can become active scientists or stewards in the marine environment. In other words, their mission is to link the diving community with scientists so that they can go out in the field and fill out serveys to help preserve marine life.

My class and I also took part in the REEF survey. Our study took place in South Kihei at the Fish Pond. The Fish Pond is an area that is protected because it is currently reconstructing a Loko Kuapa. To do our survey, we used a mask and a snorkle so that we can see and breathe underneath the water, our survey consists of water prff paper and pencil, and we brought a water proof identification sheet with us in the water in case we couldn't identify a fish. To do the survey you must group the fish in according to how many you saw. If you record any fish sightings during your swim, you must fill out another sheet to identify the exact type of fish you saw.

When we my class took the survey, the condition of the water was very poor. The water was very murky and you couldnt see anything past a foot in the water. The poor conditions of the water resulted in seeing no fish. The reason the water's condition was so poor was because of all of the rain we had recently. The rain causes run off into the fish pond, then all of the mud and junk in the water kills the algae because the sun cant penetrae through the water and algae gets it's food from the sun. Then the fish who eat the algae starves and the fish who eat those fish die from lack of food. The run off effected the whole entire ecosystem within the fish pond and that would explain why we could see any fish, because most of them were dead and the visability was poor. Although i didn't record any data, it is still useful information because it tells us that there is a shortage of fish at the Fish Pond, so this makes no data, useful data.

For more information on Reef, go to this website- http://www.reef.org/

Fish Pond Cultural Project

Cultural significance of the Loko Kuapa

The cultural significance of my pond is that it is only unique in Hawai’i; you can not find the Loko Kuapa anywhere else in the world. This pond was used as a renewable food resource that produced fish. The Loko Kuapa was basically only built by the men, they moved all the rocks and done everything within the walls. The women couldn’t go within the wall or touch any part of the pond; their job was to pick the limu for the men to use for the construction of the pond. The harvesting could take place in two ways, in one way, two men would on the wall near the gate holding up a net, they would wait for the tides push towards the gate, then they would throw pieces of taro in the water to attract the fish to one spot, then they would throw the net over the fish to capture them. The other way to harvest them would be using the pa’i pa’i technique. Let’s say there are some big fish in the corner being stubborn about coming out, two men would stand with a net, and the third would beat the water to scare them out so the other two men could throw the net over the fish. Pa’i Pa’i means to beat.

Location: This pond is the only pond that would be all the way in the ocean, the rest of the ponds would be like half way in the ocean and half on land. This pond would be in the shore of the ocean.

Construction

My fish pond was constructed by a human chain starting from the mountain to the ocean. Up in the mountains, they would gather lava rock and move it to the ocean by the human chain. The rocks would be placed very strategically with bigger rocks forming the foundation of the pond. Smaller rocks and rubble were used to fill in the gaps in the wall and to make sure the rocks in the wall would stay in place. They would build the height of the Kuapa (wall) as high as the year’s highest tides to prevent fish from escaping the pond. The wall was designed to allow waster to permeate through the rocks and circulate in the fish pond. The Makaha or the gate would be the thing that would let the small fish in and it would keep the bigger fish trapped within the Loko Kuapa. It was built by bounding the wooden gate with cordage leaving a half inch gap between the wooden pieces.

Important characteristic: Makaha- it was a gate that was designed to let the smaller fish fit through it and make the bigger fish stuck in the pond. Every fish pond has one of these.

Supplies: Lava rock, coral, and coralline algae.

This is my visual aid of a loko kuapa I made from play dough.

This is the barracuda, one of the fish you can find in the Loko Kuapa. The Hawaiian name for this fish is the Kaku.

This is seaweed or limu, you can find this plant on the walls of the loko kuapa. This was used as a kind of cement of the wall.

This is the flag tail fish, its Hawaiian name is the Aholehole. This is one of the fish that the old Hawaiians use to collect from the loko Kuapa.

This is the Threadfish, in Hawaiian, it is called the Moi. These fish happen to be very small, they can grow up to be about 165 cm. This fish can also be found in the Loko Kuapa.

This fish is called the Jack fish. The Hawaiian name for this fish is the Papio. This fish can be about 10 pounds in weight.

This is my food web. It starts out from the seaweed, the seaweed gets it's energy from the sun in a process called photosynthesis, then the small fish comes and eats the seaweed, then the bigger fish eats the smaller fish and so on and so fourth. The top of this food chain would be the barracuda.

The Inter Tidal

The inter tidal is almost like a nursery for small fish. The fish stay in the tide pools and leave to be eaten by the bigger fish in the sea. This makes the inter tidal a big part of our aquatic food chain. From my studies, i have learned what the zones are and what kind of animals live in them. The zones are splash zone, upper intertidal, lower intertidal, subtidal, and tidepools. Some animals that i have personaly found out in the field were octopus, crabs, hermit crabs, fish, sea cucumber, urchins, star fish, and vana. The tide is very important to our tide pools because they affect our high tides and low tides. The tide is affected from a thing called centrifugal force, that is when the earth and the moon's gravitational pull, pulls in unison to make extreme tides. Spring tide is when the tide are super high in one place and super low in another place, this occurs when the earth, moon and sun are all lined up. Neap tides is when high tides are not so high and when low tides are weaker, in other words it weakens the tides, this occurs when the earth, sun and the moon is not in line.

My studies took place in the tidepools, this is where i collected my data. In my group we took recordings of three groups with a one meter by one meter square called a quadric. For each quadric, we counted the number of animals that were in them, we then took the salinity with a refractometer, then we found the temperature of the water in celcius with a digital thermometer. after we got all of our information, we would look for interesting fish to catch to show to the class. After we have recoreded our findings in our notebooks, we headed back to the van to drive back to school.

Out in the field, i would say the most interesting things we found would be the two octopi our class found. One octopus was still a little baby, and the other one was almost fully grown. My research concluded that if you would go into deeper water, you will most likly find more fish. The most abundent animal i recorded in my reseach would be the crabs, you can find a lot of crabs underneath the rocks if you move them slowly, but remember, you always have to leave it the way you found it. The quadric i found that had the most animals also had the coldest water of a temperature of 25.9C, the other temperatures were 29C and 28.4C. The salinity were the same for each test area. We compared the upper intertidal and the lower intertidal, and the lower intertidal was occupied with more sea critters.

Plankton Lab

Plankton is very important to all life on Earth. Plankton are the very bottom of the food chain as the primary consumer. Plankton get there energy through a process called photosynthesis, this is where they get there food from the sun. Energy is transferred from them by bigger fish eating the plankton, then bigger fish eating the fish that just ate the plankton and so on and so fourth. Without plankton, all life in the ocean would not exist.



To study plankton, we had to go out in the field and collect our own plankton. My class of about 25 all gotten into groups of 5 or less, then each team member would have a certain task he or she would have to accomplish. After we found out what we were going to do, we headed to the Kihei Boat Ramp in South Kihei to collect our plankton samples along with other data including the temperature, the salinity, and the turbidity. To collect the plankton, we used a special plankton net made from fine mesh, and then we would put the plankton into the water bottle. To get the turbidity we used the turbidity tube, how you use this tube is by looking through it with water in it, and if you can see the little disc in the bottom, the disc is called a Suki disc, then you measure how much water you have in the tube. To find the salinity, you use a little thing called a refactometer, what you do is you put a drop of water onto the blue part of the refractometer, then you look through the scope to see what the results from the graph gives you. We measured the temperature with a digital thermometer in Celsius, we recorded the temperature of the air and the water.



After we gathered all of our data at the Kihei Boat Ramp, we brought it back to the class room to find the number of plankton in our samples. To find the plankton, we needed to use a microscope to find all the plankton in our sample. While using the microscope, we had a cool program on the computer that allows to see what we see through the microscope on the computer screen. This program is called Proscope. With the help of the telescope, we were able to count our plankton samples in our pitri grids to record our findings in our notebook.



After i have completed my study of plankton, I have found out that plankton are usually more abundant in warmer water because plankton need sun light to live. I have also found from the research of plankton experts that you can find more species of plankton in warmer water rather than cooler water. The last thing i found was that, in our samples, the most abundant type of plankton was the copepod.