The Composition of Spesies and Changes in Reef Fishes Community at Ecoreef Rehabilitation Site, Manado Tua Island, Bunaken National Park

The study conducted from 2006 to 2012 with an interval of every two years in the ecoreef area of ​​ Manado Tua island found 2,936 individual reef fishes of 181 species that include into 32 families. Species composition value of the 10 dominant species of reef fishes was 55.48% of the total species. The highest number of species was Plotosus lineatus with schooling behavior which only discovered in 2010 at a depth of 3 meters. Ecoreef area of Manado Tua island, when analyzed from the abundance and biomass of reef fishes exhibited a succession of reef fish that have been stable, with peak abundance and higher biomass in 2008 and 2010. Reef fish found in ecoreef seemed to start a new living and become a new habitat for them. These were indicated by the highest biomass during the previous year but the number of individuals and spesies were decline. There was no change in the structure of reef fish communities in the ecoreef area of Manado Tua Island, which characterized by non significant different ecological index between the years. Cluster analyses grouped reef fish species into 2 groups i.e., the group of 2006 and the group of 2008, 2010, and 2012. Early survey in 2006 showed lower abundance of reef fish species for allegedly associated with low ecoreef organisms

Coral restoration can drive rapid reef carbonate budget recovery

Restoration is increasingly seen as a necessary tool to reverse ecological decline across terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Considering the unprecedented loss of coral cover and associated reef ecosystem services, active coral restoration is gaining traction in local management strategies and has recently seen major increases in scale. However, the extent to which coral restoration may restore key reef functions is poorly understood. Carbonate budgets, defined as the balance between calcium carbonate production and erosion, influence a reef's ability to provide important geo-ecological functions including structural complexity, reef framework production, and vertical accretion. Here we present the first assessment of reef carbonate budget trajectories at restoration sites. The study was conducted at one of the world's largest coral restoration programs, which transplants healthy coral fragments onto hexagonal metal frames to consolidate degraded rubble fields. Within 4 years, fast coral growth supports a rapid recovery of coral cover (from 17% ± 2% to 56% ± 4%), substrate rugosity (from 1.3 ± 0.1 to 1.7 ± 0.1) and carbonate production (from 7.2 ± 1.6 to 20.7 ± 2.2 kg m yr ). Four years after coral transplantation, net carbonate budgets have tripled and are indistinguishable from healthy control sites (19.1 ± 3.1 and 18.7 ± 2.2 kg m yr , respectively). However, taxa-level contributions to carbonate production differ between restored and healthy reefs due to the preferential use of branching corals for transplantation. While longer observation times are necessary to observe any self-organization ability of restored reefs (natural recruitment, resilience to thermal stress), we demonstrate the potential of large-scale, well-managed coral restoration projects to recover important ecosystem functions within only 4 years