Coral Reef Community Changes in Karimunjawa National Park, Indonesia: Assessing the Efficacy of Management in the Face of Local and Global Stressors

Emma V Kennedy ,Patrick Gartrell,Peter Dalton,Agus Prabowo,Anjani Ganase,Kathryn Markey,Puji Prihatinningsih,Sutris Haryanta,Julie Vercelloni,Ambariyanto Ambariyanto,Susannah Green,Mu’Alimah Hudatwi,Dominic E P Bryant ,Sebastian Lopez‐Marcano ,Catherine J S Kim ,Kristen T Brown ,Alberto Rodríguez-Ramírez ,Manuel González‐Rivero ,Benjamin P Neal ,Abdul Hâdi ,Ove Hoegh‐Guldberg

doi:10.3390/jmse8100760

Abstract

Karimunjawa National Park is one of Indonesia’s oldest established marine parks. Coral reefs across the park are being impacted by fishing, tourism and declining water quality (local stressors), as well as climate change (global pressures). In this study, we apply a multivariate statistical model to detailed benthic ecological datasets collected across Karimunjawa’s coral reefs, to explore drivers of community change at the park level. Eighteen sites were surveyed in 2014 and 2018, before and after the 2016 global mass coral bleaching event. Analyses revealed that average coral cover declined slightly from 29.2 ± 0.12% (Standard Deviation, SD) to 26.3 ± 0.10% SD, with bleaching driving declines in most corals. Management zone was unrelated to coral decline, but shifts from massive morphologies toward more complex foliose and branching corals were apparent across all zones, reflecting a park-wide reduction in damaging fishing practises. A doubling of sponges and associated declines in massive corals could not be related to bleaching, suggesting another driver, likely declining water quality associated with tourism and mariculture. Further investigation of this potentially emerging threat is needed. Monitoring and management of water quality across Karimunjawa may be critical to improving resilience of reef communities to future coral bleaching.

Highlights

Tropical coral communities are degrading globally and at a rapid pace, undermining the functioning of the coral reef ecosystems that they underpin, and the people that depend on healthy reefs for food and jobs [1]
Karimunjawa was chosen as a study site because of its size, age and importance [18], and to compliment the efforts of the Indonesian Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Program (COREMAP) in order to deepen the coverage national reef resources [26,44]
Most of these patterns appeared to be ubiquitous and management zone, but negative correlation identified between Sponge and Hard coral suggest that Zones with more sponges had much fewer corals, and vice-versa (Figure 5)

Summary

Introduction

Tropical coral communities are degrading globally and at a rapid pace, undermining the functioning of the coral reef ecosystems that they underpin, and the people that depend on healthy reefs for food and jobs [1]. Improving reef health may buy time, or improve resilience to climate stressors [12,13] (and see [14]). Assessing efficacy of these types of local management action in the face of multiple local and global stressors requires regular monitoring of reef condition, as well as an understanding of reef communities responses to different drivers of decline. The taxonomic complexity of coral reef communities, different responses to multiple drivers of decline, and the different scales of monitoring and management, present a challenge to achieving this understanding

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion