Before moving to Guam, I read about how Guam has the highest coral reef biodiversity of any US state or territory. So, getting the opportunity to be a Scientist in Park (SIP) Fellow at the War in the Pacific National Historical Park (WAPA) has been the highlight of my summer. My name is Motusaga Vaeoso, and I am a graduate student at the University of Guam studying Marine Biology. Let me tell you about the exciting work that has been going on during my fellowship since I started over a month ago.

Most of my background is in coral reef monitoring, and I have had the opportunity to utilize this experience and expand it at WAPA. I have been immersed in learning about the diverse number of organisms that inhabit the reef flats of the Asan and Agat units, once scarred during the fierce battles of World War II. Reef flats are the largest parts of coral reefs, often affected by coral bleaching due to their shallow depth and exposure at extreme low tide, sedimentation from coastal settlement and development, and overfishing. This is why it’s important to monitor the health and percent cover of corals on WAPA reef flats so we can track changes over time to help inform coral reef management and future monitoring.

To establish a baseline for assessing the health of the reef flats in Asan and Agat, I will be working with an amazing group of people that make up the WAPA Marine Team to:

1. 1. create training materials to build staff capacity to conduct fish monitoring surveys which will complement the protocols for coral and invertebrate surveys
2. 2. collect percent coral cover, fish and invertebrate diversity and abundance to assess reef flat health
3. 3. and collect the percent coral cover of coral restoration sites right outside the Asan Beach unit

In addition to reef flat monitoring, part of my time as a SIP fellow at WAPA will be spent building CoralCam, which involves learning a whole new set of skills. CoralCams are a cost-effective method for converting cheap cameras into programmable time-lapsed platforms, allowing for time-series collection of photos or video in remote locations for extended time periods. Although daunting at first because I am not a mechanical engineer, I have had so much fun learning about how the CoralCam circuit board is built, how to solder, and the different soldering techniques, tinning wire, programming, etc. I will be assembling 19 CoralCams for deployment within the park to monitor coral reef processes such as recruitment, predation, competition, and mortality.

My obsession with underwater photography has grown since I started working for WAPA. I have done my best to document and identify the many marine organisms caught under my lens. However, discovering iNaturalist, a social network made of many citizen scientists and biologists (many of them experts in their field) who share biodiversity information across the globe to help each other learn about their environment, has been a game-changer for me. It allowed me to put my obsession to good use by sharing my fish, coral, and invertebrate photos to improve my species identification skills. If you want to check out some of the marine species I observe at WAPA, you can check out my iNaturalist account.

Stay tuned for more updates on the work I am doing at WAPA and if you want to start learning about your park and the animals and plants that live in it, get on iNaturalist and share your observations with other naturalists.

Tracking Biodiversity

Much of my past and ongoing work involves collecting field data to add to long-term datasets and to provide brand-new information as well. Monitoring is one of the crucial first stages in the ecologist’s life cycle because, without monitoring data, plant ecologists do not have any way to confidently know how a plant community is changing over time. By routinely visiting the same areas year after year and meticulously recording things like abundances of species, we can learn a lot of different things about a plant community and the recovery of biodiversity. As a SIP intern, I have added to this special knowledge base by monitoring new community attributes, such as the presence of early spring-blooming species, flowering times, and plant traits like seed mass. Together, each set of data provides new perspectives on what is happening to hundreds of plants species year to year and during the restoration of communities that have been ecologically degraded.

Gettin’ Down with Data

As you might have guessed, the next stage in the life cycle is data analysis! This is where we can really start to piece together the “ecological puzzle” of plant community processes and restoration. There are lots of methods and ways to look at monitoring data and we can answer a wide variety of useful questions with these data, from “Are sensitive early spring-bloomers establishing soon after restoration?” to “How does weather after restoration seeding affect community structure 10 years later?”

But what I am really working on this summer is how we can apply this analyzed data to restoration design and management action on the ground. To do this, I am looking at lots of different graphs to determine things like key times to monitor restored communities with the goal of producing a “white paper” that translates science into management ideas.

Spreading the Word

Finally, I have begun to “spread my branches towards the sun” to bring this science into the light and the public eye. A large component of my internship is focused on communicating all this valuable information to diverse audiences and inspiring others to care about the sagebrush steppe ecosystem. I have engaged future restoration volunteers by teaching a plant ID field course, started a social media campaign about the #secretsofthesage, and am currently developing a StoryMap to tell the interesting tale of the sagebrush steppe and the long-term, large-scale restoration project ongoing in Grand Teton National Park.

This final stage in the ecologist’s life cycle is arguably one of the most important because science communication truly is the fruit of many years of data collection, analysis, and contemplation. Science cannot go far without public (and internal) support. Furthermore, without people to care about ecological restoration and other management projects, funding and interest dwindle quickly. Hopefully, with some effort, my contributions will help to sow the seeds of interest and inspiration which will result in helping hands and collaborations to preserve the imperiled sagebrush steppe for many generations to come.