Hawaii residents are urged to use the Pest Hotline to promptly report sightings of invasive pests such as snakes, unusually aggressive stinging ants, and illegal or unknown animals. Call 643-PEST (643-7378).
One of the larger projects undertaken by the AIS Team is the local eradication of one of two known populations of snowflake coral on the island of Kauai.
Snowflake coral (Carijoa riisei) is an invasive soft coral that has become very common around Oahu and Maui and evidence indicates that snowflake coral can overgrow and smother black coral. The population of snowflake coral on Kauai is contained in the Port Allen Harbor, on pilings under the commercial pier.
The project goal is to eradicate this population to possibly prevent its spread to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, as the Kauai population is the closest known population.
The commercial pier at Port Allen consists of 738 pilings equating to 120,000 square feet of substrate. The AIS Team is leading the project, which uses an innovative technique of wrapping pier pilings with industrial plastic, which smothers the snowflake coral colonies. Preliminary tests have shown this method to be 100% effective at killing snowflake coral.
The future
It is expected that this project will be completed in 2006. The AIS Team will continue to monitor for regrowth, and an outreach program to ocean-users such as dive companies and snorkel tours has been initiated to aid in new reports.
