The Composition and Structure of Reef Community at Tho Chu Island (South China Sea) after Ketsana Typhoon

Abstract

Fringing the reefs of the island Tho Chu explored a quarter century later now reexamined in the Gulf of Thailand of the South China Sea. It was found that most of the reefs of the island were lost after the passage of typhoon "Ketsana" accompanied by heavy rains and strong sea waves higher than 2 meters in October 2009. Because of these natural phenomena, physical destruction of many of the coral communities occurred. Removal of terrigenous sediments from the islands in the water has led to increased sedimentation and loss of almost all the scleractinian family Acroporidae, the main building corals on the reefs of the Indo-Pacific, at present, in places where once there was full-reef community succession restoring the reef due to the survivors of the typhoon colonies of coral genera Pocillopora and Acropora.

The spatial-temporal variability and stability of Vietnamese reef communities

“…Exam ples include the reefs of the Hon Tre and Den islands in Khanh Hoa Province, which are under the protec tion of the state, as well as reefs of Bach Long Vi Island and the Spratly Archipelago [11,35,46,48,54], which are located distant from populated areas. This is also corroborated by the results of recent studies (2010, 2013) of the coral reef of the Con Dao Islands, which is an ecosystem that is not subjected to pronounced human impacts and has been optimally preserved for the past quarter century [13,[33][34][35]. Some reefs of these islands have been declared a national park and are under the protection of the state.…”

“…As a result, the identified species richness of the reef building sclerac tinians of Vietnam increased by more than 4% and reached 376 species. Since the composition and distri bution of the reef biota were described in detail previ ously [12,13,33,34], we will focus on the changes that have occurred in some reefs in the past 10-12 years.…”

“…Under the influence of a typhoon, the morphology of the reef body, as well as the composition and structure of a coral community change [26,27,34,36].…”

Substrate damage and recovery after giant clam shell mining at remote coral reefs in the southern South China Sea

“…Typhoon Wutip and typhoon Pabuk reduced respectively ~46% and more than 60% of the coral cover in the shallow areas (depth < 3 m) at the Yongle Atolls in the central SCS in 2013 (Yang et al, 2015) and at Pulao Bidong in the southern SCS in 2019 (Safuan et al, 2020). Coral reefs at the Tho Chu Island in the southern SCS were destroyed with a loss of corals of ~40%-80% by Typhoon Ketsana in 2009 (Latypov, 2013). Compared to typhoons, GCSM appears to have similar abrupt impacts on coral reefs, but the damage from GCSM is much lower in magnitude and range than that caused by a typhoon.…”

Some Notes on the Regeneration of Coral Reef Ecosystems

“…In this regard, the reef can be recognized by the system extremely resistant to mechanical stress. This is evidenced by observations of different years on the restoration of both individual colonies and entire coral ecosystems exposed to catastrophic hurricanes (Funafuti Atoll, 1972, [6] tsunami (the reefs of Viti-Levu, 1961), and even the atomic bomb (Bikini Atoll, 1946), and recent typhoons in the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]. Table 1 The entire reef The upper part of the reef walling foreign small and medium-sized objects that prevent the normal animal life.…”