Discussion

Zone A substrate is dominated by mud and rubble, has the least living cover. What living cover it has is dominated by macroalgae. This zone of highest SGD influence may be too stressful for most organisms to thrive, either due to sainity changes or the muddy environment. The only species that seem to thrive here are the non-sclerictinian coral Zoanthid sp. and the invasive macroalgae Gracilaria saicornia. Zone B substrate was mixed rubble, rock, sand and mud. It has the median amount of living cover, the living cover here is dominated by macroalgae and turf algae, with some coralline algae. Zone C substrate was dominated by rubble with sand and rock. The living cover here is dominated by turf algae, with little macroalgae, and more coralline algae than any other zone. This zone of least SGD influence shows signs of lower nutrient availability and higher grazing pressure from herbivorous fish.

Our Team

Our team assembled thanks to Data Visualization, a course by Dr. Jason Leigh, conducted virtually from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Fall of 2020. We are a multidisciplinary team of computer scientists and a marine botanist. Together, we used the concepts taught in Dr. Leigh's data visualization course to visualize the benthic marine data brought to the team by our marine botanist. The computer scientists created visualizations of the data and constructed this page, and allowed for the marine botanist to fill in text and contribute to visualization decisions.