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In August and September of 2007, Medical Foundation personnel in association with the Scripps Intitute of Oceanography (SIO), spent 21 days conducting a full ecological survey of Kingman Reef. The Searcher was loaded in Honolulu and brought down to Palymra where researchers boarded for the trip to Kingman. Located about 40 miles north/northwest of Palmyra (and thus about 900 nm. south of Honolulu), Kingman is truly an isolated ecosystem in the middle of the Pacific.
Unlike Palmyra there has never been any resident human population at Kingman making it a unique place to study an unimpacted ecosystem. Assisted by Medical Foundation personell, scientists from SIO, San Diego State, the Oceanic Institute, NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service worked to study everything from the microbiology of the water, to the coral reef structure, to the fish and plants that inhabit this ecosystem.
Dr. Jim Maragos, looking at coral coverage Collecting water for microbiological analysis Additionally a photographer from the magazine, National Geographic, documented the work and the wonders of this special place and a daily blog was posted at the National Geographic Magazine website: ngm.typepad.com/virgin_reefs
National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry. Photo: J Maragos Every morning we would break into three teams and board the skiffs to go to the survey sites. At each site teams attempted to collect data at depths of 5m, 10m and then at 20m. Sites were picked either south of the reef, north of the reef or within the lagoon itself (both patch reefs and backreef sites within the lagoon). Generally we were doing two dives in the morning and then one in the afternoon. Evenings would be spent on data analysis and planning the next day's activities. Kingman's lagoon is approximately 10 nm east-west and about 5 nm. north-south, and mostly surrounded by fringing reef. This provided a huge area to have to survey and often the skiffs would travel 15-20 miles roundtrip to reach some of the sites. However this allowed us to get a good representation of the ecosystem and how differing exposures (to the winds, swell, sun, etc...) had developed differently and in which conditions certain species would tend to be more prevalent.
Kingman is truly a special place and deserves all of the protection it can get. When we first arrived there was a shipwreck up on the reef. Dr. Jim Maragos, who had been working in the area the previous year, stated that it had not been there last year. Upon further investigation it was found to be a large wooden boat, about 23m in length. It appears that there had been a fire aboard, as the interior of the boat was scorched and in complete disarray (it may have rolled when washing onto the reef). There were some large cylinders and possibly still fuel in the tanks. However it was too dangerous for us to investigate further without risk of injury. A call was placed to inform the US Coast Guard of the wreck and the danger it posed to Kingman. It was great to sea that within a few days a USCG ship came to investigate and the following day a C-130 did a flyover to further assess how to best safely remove this wreck. Kingman is truly pristine and beautiful and it is good to see an effort to keep it that way.
In all over 450 person dives were made. Surveys were taken at 15 sites on the fore reef, 15 sites on the back reef, 14 patch reefs, and 6 sites in an area we called "the clam gardens". Data was collected on abundance, size, and biomass of 250 species of reef fish, 180 species of coral, and 20 species of microalgae. Additionally over 600 photos were taken of the bottom for analysis of coral coverage and algae and the National Geographic photographer took 4,000 photos, many absolutely incredible.
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