Who’ll study
Kapaa Reef? No one

The state has no funds for
long-term monitoring of
ship damage to reefs

Remove wreckage, biologist advises

By Anthony Sommer
Star-Bulletin

KAPAA, Kauai -- After the initial assessments of damage to Kapaa Reef from the fishing vessel Van Loi, who is going to monitor the long-term effects?

The answer: No one.

The reason: There isn't any money.

Virtually all of the coral reefs in Hawaii belong to the state. Even though fish-watching -- snorkeling and scuba diving -- is a major tourist attraction, the state has no budget for monitoring damage to the reefs from ships running aground or spilling fuel or cargo.

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration files what's called a Natural Resource Damage Assessment immediately after an accident on a reef," said Bill Devick, acting head of the state Division of Aquatic Resources.

"But that's mostly a survey to attempt to estimate the visible damage, not a long-term scientific study," Devick added.

The state's resident marine biologist on Kauai, Don Heacock, visited the wreck yesterday with John Naughton of the National Marine Fisheries Service to begin that short-term federal study.

When they're done, it's unlikely any biologists ever will return to Kapaa Reef for follow-up studies on the wreck of the Van Loi.

No one will ever know whether toxins from the fuel spill have entered the food chain or are killing coral.

"There's just no money at the state level," Devick said.

That's true, said Devick's boss, Tim Johns, director of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. With the state battered by tough economic times, it is difficult for the state to find the funds to conduct long-term research assessing the damage to isle reefs, he said.

"Yes, there is a danger that is there is no assessment. Obviously, we need more information to learn how that (coral reef growing) process works," he acknowledged.

Fortunately, ship groundings are relatively rare in Hawaii, Johns said. He is hopeful that President Clinton's coral reef task force initiative will result in federal funds for isle reef studies.

The Northwest Hawaiian Islands and the main Hawaiian islands have 85 percent of the coral reefs in U.S. jurisdiction. "If you worry about the nation's coral reefs, you have to think Hawaii," Johns said.

What little federal money is available goes mainly to Florida, the only other state with living coral reefs. For decades Florida has had an aggressive state program as well to protect the reefs off the Florida Keys.

As the result of an accident almost identical to the Van Loi grounding, one of Devick's assistants, Dave Gulko, has applied to the federal government for money to create a task force to deal with damage to coral reefs.

But Devick points out that even if that effort is funded, it will be for short-term emergency projects only.

In November a lobster fishing boat called the Paradise Queen ran aground at Kure Atoll, the last island group in the Hawaiian chain and the site of a state wildlife refuge.

Kure is on what biologists call "the Darwin point," the latitude at which coral no longer grows and coral islands eventually collapse into the sea. It is, Devick said, a unique marine environment.

Like this week's grounding off Kauai, once the initial cleanup was accomplished under the Coast Guard, there was no state funding to pull the wreck off the state-owned reef.

"We went to the Navy and they have the equipment and they really wanted to do it as a training exercise," Devick said. "But they are restrained by a federal law that forbids Navy ships from doing salvage work that could be done by a private contractor."

And the state didn't have any money to hire a contractor, so the Paradise Queen is still up there grinding away at the reef, Devick said. He added that studies have shown that rusting shipwrecks attract algae growth that crowds out existing coral.

"That's why we applied for the federal grant, but that would be only for emergency response, not long-term reef monitoring."

The only long-term reef study program was organized two years ago at the University of Hawaii -- again with federal rather than state funding.

The program is called CRAMP -- Coral Reef Assessment and Maintenance Program -- and it's aimed at using student volunteers to conduct the first baseline study of all of Hawaii's coral reefs.

Once scientists know what the marine life populations of specific reef systems are today, they can look for changes caused by pollution, particularly long-term pollution, tomorrow.

But the program is not set up to study the long-term effects of isolated individual incidents such as shipwrecks or petroleum spills.

"There's just no funding to send researchers out to the same wreck site to set up transects and conduct population studies year after year," said Elizabeth Cox of UH's Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. "It's hard to justify that kind of expense."

In most cases, a reef damaged by a single event like a ship running aground eventually will recover, Cox said. Unless the bedrock on which a reef is growing has been badly damaged by a ship running aground, regrowth will occur.

She noted it's virtually impossible to find reef damage in Hawaii from military exercises during World War II when petroleum spills, ships running aground and underwater explosions were daily occurrences.

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Remove remains of fishing
boat, biologist advises

By Anthony Sommer
Star-Bulletin

KAPAA, Kauai -- A marine biologist conducting the first assessment of damage caused when the fishing vessel Van Loi ran aground Saturday said yesterday he found "a huge white skid mark across the reef."

Don Heacock of the state Division of Aquatic Resources recommended that the remaining wreckage be removed immediately before the surf comes up and the metal pieces begin tearing at the reef again.

Heacock and two local divers snorkeled the wreck site yesterday and planned to return with scuba gear today.

"There's a lot of physical damage, a lot of broken coral," Heacock said. "We also found chunks of coralline algae a meter square," he added. Coralline algae, a hard pink plant often mistaken for coral, makes up about 90 percent ofthe reefs around Kauai.

The good news, he said, was a lack of coral bleaching that would indicate the 16,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled by the wreck had poisoned the coral. Heavy wave action appears to have quickly diluted the spilled fuel, he said.

Heacock also said he did not find any dead sea urchins, which would have been the first victims of poisoning. But he added he doubts many urchins lived in the area anyway.

The pair discovered a mound of hooked fishing leaders the Coast Guard wants recovered before they can entangle marine life.

Heacock met with Mayor Maryanne Kusaka, state health officials and Coast Guard officers in Lihue yesterday to report his findings.

"We agreed that we somehow need to get together and get that wreckage off the reef before it starts rocking again and causing more damage," he said.

Responsibility for removing the wreckage lies with the ship's owner, but "it appears there is no insurance money left to pay for recovering the wreckage," Heacock said.