Building capacity for water quality and coral monitoring in American Samoa

By: Joy Smith, Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (CIMAR)

Takeaway: Capacity for water quality and coral monitoring has been increased in American Samoa by following a successful three-pronged approach. Engaging partners, training local communities and citizens, and connecting water quality monitoring to natural resource management objectives ensures continuation of this work into the future.

This project, funded by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program and NOAA's Pacific Islands Regional Office, aimed to build capacity for water quality and benthic monitoring for our partners in American Samoa. The monitoring protocols followed NOAA's National Coral Reef Monitoring Program's Rapid Ecological Assessment methodology. Three Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research staff from NOAA's Ecosystems Science Division traveled to American Samoa to collaborate with partners from the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources (DMWR) and the American Samoa Coral Reef Advisory Group (CRAG). DMWR and CRAG were critical to the success of this project and we thank them profusely!

Training took place in three stages, starting with virtual lectures, followed by in-person classroom days, and finishing with in-water training via snorkelling and kayaking. Presentations on the project and how the project ties to American Samoa local management objectives for coral reef conservation were followed by benthic training lectures. After learning about water quality and coral ecology, participants received hands-on practical experience, where they were able to use water quality equipment and practice the survey choreography. A 30-meter transect of a coral reef was used as a teaching tool so that participants could practice some of the methods, including identifying coral colony boundaries. Additionally, participants practiced filtering water for total suspended sediments and dissolved nutrients, measured environmental parameters (temperature, salinity, pH), and learned about best data management practices.

Field training consisted of alternating days between benthic surveys and water quality sampling. For benthic training, participants learned how to collect data on coral species (or genus), morphology, and size. Additionally, they also learned how to identify colony boundaries, estimate partial mortality, identify cause of recent death (coral disease, predation, physical damage), and determine colony conditions (e.g., bleaching, algal or fungal infections) that impact the living part of the coral.

For the water quality component of field training, water samples were collected using a Niskin bottle via kayaks or paddle boards. The kayak/paddleboard teams also hung a temperature logger over the side of the kayak to measure temperature at the reef and a land-based team received the water samples and started to process the sample from each site. The land-based team was divided into three teams, one focused on collecting the environmental data (temperature, salinity, pH), one on filtering water for total suspended sediments, and one on filtering water for dissolved nutrients (phosphate, nitrate and nitrate, ammonia). Now that local organizations have learned methods on water quality protocol, they will be able to conduct their own future research on the impacts of land-based sources of pollution on coral reefs.

This project was truly collaborative between coral reef monitoring programs from NOAA and local partners in American Samoa. The effort to build technical skills among local staff has enabled them to learn skills to monitor coral health and evaluate the impacts of pollution on reef resilience. In addition to capacity building training goals, the data collected from in-water training will be used to answer scientific questions related to water quality impacts on coral communities and reef resilience. Furthermore, the design of the training and scientific goals were further developed to meet management objectives.