Frontier-Tanzania Environmental Research REPORT 103 Misali Island

Misali Island: A detailed description of the subtidal regions3.2.4 Results summary of site reports and depth profiles• Misali Island has extensive coral reef slopes and wall along its west subtidalregion with contrasting shallow-sloping seagrass and sandy substratum to theeast;• There is a narrow band of coral reef to the north, near the Ranger station, andsmall coral bommies sparsely distributed around the shallower easterly andsoutherly waters;• Towards the south, coral bommies are distributed more densely until the southwestforms patchy reef leading to the more extensively covered reef slopes onthe west;• The coral reef slopes increase in gradient from the south-west regions towardsthe north-west, as a wall with the highest coral cover in comparison to the restof the island becomes more dominant;• North of the wall, in the waters to the north-west of Misali Island, the reefs areconstructed of less severe slopes that lead to sand gulleys and more patchyribbons of coral reef;• The coral cover is fairly low in most reef areas (1-30%). Recently killed coralwas recorded amongst the live coral, more commonly towards the north-westand west of Misali;• Bare rock (1-75% cover) and rubble (0-10% cover) are found amongst the reefareas, predominantly along the westerly and north-westerly regions of Misali;• None of the survey sites were shown to have a silt substrate when medianvalues were calculated from the data (Fig. 5), although silt was recorded insome individual surveys at all sites except 5;• Sand dominated, or was the only substrate, to the north, east and south of Misaliand was present, though with less percentage cover, to the west.Frontier-Tanzania Environmental Research Report 103 29