Pom Pom Island, there is only one word to describe it....paradise. I arrived
here on Pom Pom on the 18th of April
2012 and literally felt like I had stepped into paradise. The view of the
island from the boat was just breathtaking, turquoise water, white sands. I was
overwhelmed with excitement at the fact that I was going to stay in this beautiful
place for my masters project! As I got off the boat I was greeted so nicely by
all the staff and instantly felt at home. Something told me this was going to
be a good three months.
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| The beautiful island of Pom Pom |
My time here will be devoted to conducting fieldwork for my Msc project with
Professor Steve Oakley as my mentor, on the soft coral Parerythropodium fulvum
fulvum. Yes, I know it is a mouthful hence Steve named it ‘the yellow triffid’ due to its fast
growth rate and ability to grow over a lot of coral and substrate. I will be
looking specifically at this growth rate and how it is affected by depth,
current and location which is something that has not been looked at before with
regards to this species thus will be answering numerous ecological and
biological questions with regards to this species.
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| Parerythropodium fulvum
fulvum. ‘the yellow triffid’ |
After growing the yellow
triffid in the coral nursery at depths of 3-5m (we went to Pandanan Island to
collect a surplus of yellow triffid and then placed fragments of it on 15×15cm concrete
blocks and letting it grow for two weeks) we plan to go to 6 different locations (regional
island reefs varying by current intensity and ecology) and place the coral at
varying depths of 5,10,15,20,25 m along a transect and recording the growth
rate at 2 week intervals. This will be done by photographing each block of
yellow triffid and working out the increase in horizontal growth using a design
software programme called AutoCAD. This is easily feasible due to the fast
growth rates observed by this species.
If I have time I will try and also look at what might be predating on the
yellow triffid as it has been observed that colonies of yellow triffid in the
wild only increase upto a certain size. Thus something very obsecure and not
obvious has to be predating on it, as it has yet to be seen. I would also like
to look at competition of yellow triffid with numerous aggressive hard corals
as I have observed it growing over only some species of hard coral in the wild
and it has not been able to grow over other species. Determination of these
specific species would increase knowledge of this species of soft coral has not
been studied in great depth.
