Diversity and Health Status of Coral Reefs in Satang Islands

• Main Author: Terance Nyamie, Anak Dali
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) 2014
• Subjects: S Agriculture (General)
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/27768/2/Terance%20Nyamie.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/27768/

Coral reefs is an essential natural habitat for many marine organisms, however due to human activities impact the coral reefs greatly stressed. The coral diversity data and the health status important for future coral reefs monitoring plan as it play roles to marine ecosystem. The aims of the study is to determine the hard coral composition and percentage cover at selected sites in Satang Island. This study also aim to identify hard coral diversity indices. Lastly is to get the hard coral health status Satang Island and compared it to other sites in Malaysia. The method used in the study is Point Intercept Line Transect (PILT) method which used to get the diversity indices data and also the coral health status. The overall life hard coral in Satang Island is 17.7%. The total genera collected are 13 genus, and total species of the coral reefs are 20 species recorded. The ShannonWiener Index in Satang Island is 2.0543, Pielou's Evenness Index is 0.6003 and Berger Parker Dominance Index is 0.2217. Coral at PSBE recorded highest diversity index while corals at PSKW recorded the highest evenness and dominate value. The health status of coral reefs in Satang Island `poor' due to low coral cover and present of high amount of silt and Nutrient Indicator Algae (NIA). The coral reefs in Satang Island suppose highly monitored and more stations to be surveyed.