Abstract
The suggested link between fibropapillomatosis (FP) in Hawai'ian marine turtles and non-native macroalgae is indeed very interesting. As mentioned in the Introduction to the present article, FP became a problem for Hawai'ian green turtles only in the 1980s, incidentally when the same problem emerged among marine turtles in Florida. I always wondered how an epidemic could start-off simultaneously at two geographic locations as far apart as Hawai'i and Florida. But then, I stumbled over some statements of Celia M. Smith, Professor of Botany at the University of Hawai’i, who testified on April 15, 2005, regarding the impact of marine invasive algae before the US House of Representatives. Among others, she mentioned that in the 1970s various species of exotic algae were introduced from the Philippines and the Caribbean to Hawai'ian waters. There were both legal and illegal introductions. Most often, the algae were placed in pens on the reef adjacent to the Hawai'ian Institute of Marine Biology in Kaneohe Bay. Citation: … Water motion in that region was sufficient for parts of the plants to break and be carried off the reef, eventually allowing for the escape of these algae to other regions of Kaneohe Bay. …. Moreover, she mentioned that the red alga Hypnea musciformis, which is specifically mentioned in the present article, readily spread from there to other Hawai'ian islands and posed a particular problem for Maui. (Kaneohe Bay and Maui mentioned in the present article as most highly infested with FP-cases.)
Published Version
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