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/