Stimulating investment in pearl farming in ... - World Fish Center

Suitability of Habitats for Growth of Black-Lip and Silver-Lip Pearl Oysters Final, June 20081988). The entire area is characterised by an extensive and complex system of submergedand emergent coral reefs. This area includes the Trobriand-Normandy, East Cape-NuakataBarrier and Sideia-Basilaki Barrier Reefs and Gallows reef which separates the first twobarrier reefs. Over the past decade, two rapid marine biodiversity assessments have beenundertaken in Milne Bay province(Werner and Allen 1998; Allen et al. 2003). The firstassessment focused on Milne Bay proper, East Cape area, D’Entrecasteaux Islands, EngineerGroup, Conflict Group, Nuakata region, and the southern tier of islands including Samarai,Sideia, and Basilaki. The second assessment focused on Goodenough and Collingwood bayson the mainland, the Amphlett Islands, D’Entrecasteaux Islands, Rossel Island, Sudest Islandand Calvados Chain in the Louisiade Archipelago. The sites surveyed included outer reefsand passages, isolated platform reefs, fringing reefs and lagoons and patch reefs.The North Louisdiade Barrier Reefs situated to the east of the Papuan Island Groupcomprise the Shortland Reefs, Engineer Reef, Esmerald Reef, Conflict Group and TorlesseIsland, the Deboyne Group and Redlick Atoll. There are fringing reefs around many of theseislands and numerous patch reefs. This area also includes several shelf atolls, barrier rimatolls, oceanic atolls and raised atolls and two major insular barrier reefs. The CalvadosBarrier Reef is separated from the rest of the New Guinea Barrier system by narrowchannels. The reef, which is 180 km long, 48 km in diameter and 500 km in circumference, isone of the largest atoll structures in the world. It is separated from the Sudest and CalvadosChain by a 8-32 km wide lagoon, which is 50-60 m deep away from patches reef and highislands. The barrier is more like a “ribbon reef” on its south-eastern and southern side andis submerged for 40 km in the south-west. Most of the passes in the barrier are relativelyshallow (10-20 m depth), however, there are some passes over 50 m deep. The second majorinsular barrier reef, the Rossel Barrier Reef, is located 11-16 km to the east of Sudest. Thereare secondary barrier reefs on the north-west side of the Calvados Barrier and around someof the small isolated islands to the south-east of East Cape and fringing-barrier transitionreefs in the Deboyne Islands, Misima and Muyua.There are extensive reefs around Central, Bougainville, New Ireland and Manus Provinces,but only discontinuous reefs around New Britain and East and West Sepik.4.6 Solomon IslandsThe Solomon Islands archipelago is orientated south-east to north-west and located betweenlatitudes 5-12° S and longitudes 152-170°E (Ramohia 2006). The archipelago consists of sixmajor islands, 30 medium size islands and 886 smaller islands (Hughes 2006). The six mainislands (Choiseul, Isabel, Malaita, Makira, Guadalcanal and New Georgia) are arranged in adouble chain with the two strands separated by the New Georgia Sound and IndispensableStrait (Sulu et al. 2000)(Figure 6).The first broad-scale survey of the geomorphology, composition and ecology of coral reefhabitats in the Solomon Islands was undertaken in 1965 by The Royal Society of London(Stoddart 1969a-c, Morton 1974). During these studies, 36 fringing reefs distributed acrossthe Florida and Russell Islands, Guadalcanal and New Georgia, in the southern SolomonIslands were examined. Morton (1974) noted that these reefs were generally associated withuplifted shores and that they were either attached to volcanic coastlines or grew seawardfrom elevated coral limestone benches. He distinguished four types of fringing reef:• Broad fringing reefs, up to 500-600 m across, located in sheltered embayments;The Ecology Lab Pty Ltd – Marine and Freshwater Studies Page 17