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kesäkuu 11, 2024

Lord Howe and Norfolk islands – the fish checklist

Above left: Francis' goatfish (Upeneus francisi) described by John 'Jack' Randall and named after Malcolm Francis. Photo by Jack Randall
Above right: The masked moki or blacktip morwong (Goniistius francisi) was described by Chris Burridge and named after Malcolm Francis. Photo by Malcolm Francis
After visiting the Kermadec Islands for the first time in 1985, I became fascinated with two other subtropical island groups which lie to the west at a similar latitude: Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island. In 1988, I took my young family on a fish-counting holiday, flying to Australia before hopping first to Lord Howe and continuing on to Norfolk. I wasn’t the first person to count coastal fish species on the two islands but my counts built substantially on what had been done before.
About the same time, I began an ongoing correspondence with the late John Randall (known to everyone as Jack), an eminent fish biologist at the Bishop Museum in Hawaii. Jack had surveyed fish species on the islands of Rapa, Pitcairn and Easter, which are at similar latitudes in the eastern Pacific, and we were fascinated in the similarities and differences across the subtropical South Pacific. My family and I made more trips in quick succession to both Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands for diving, underwater photography and fish counting, and Jack and his wife joined us at Norfolk Island and made their own trips to Lord Howe. Jack and I then published several papers together, and in 1992 Jack published a description of a new goatfish from Norfolk Island which he named Upeneus francisi. I was very honoured!
The islands are all volcanic in origin (Raoul Island in the Kermadecs is still active) but differ in size and topography: they all have coral, but while Lord Howe Island is home to the southern-most surface coral reef in the world (about 6 km long), the lagoon at Norfolk – which is home to large patches of coral - is fringed by a 1-kilometre long limestone reef, and the Kermadec Islands has no reef but hosts small colonies of coral.
I published my first “Checklist of the coastal fishes of Lord Howe, Norfolk and Kermadec Islands” in 1993. It included 433 fish species from Lord Howe, and numbers declined as distance from the Australian mainland increased and the amount of coral decreased: Norfolk had 235 species and there were 145 at the Kermadecs.
I have continued to maintain the checklist as a living document, helped greatly by fellow divers, fishers and researchers who have shared their discoveries with me over the years.
In 2019, I put the checklist online as a Figshare document, so that it is easily available to anyone interested. I updated the checklist in 2022, and it is interesting to see how many more species have been added in the intervening 30 years. The latest version now lists 572 fish species at Lord Howe Island, 315 from Norfolk Island and 210 from the Kermadecs.
Among the fish found in all three island groups is the blacktip morwong, also known as the masked moki, named by Chris Burridge: Goniistius francisi.
Thanks, Jack and Chris – I still get a thrill every time I am underwater and meet ‘my’ namesake fishes.
Julkaistu kesäkuu 11, 2024 05:03 AP. käyttäjältä malcolm_francis malcolm_francis | 0 kommenttia | Jätä kommentti

toukokuu 28, 2024

Kermadec Islands

The remote Kermadec Islands lie about 1000 kilometres northeast of northern New Zealand. There are five islands in the archipelago, the only visible parts of a chain of about 80 volcanoes, that stretches for 2,600 km between Tonga and New Zealand

From south to north the islands are tiny L’Esperance Rock, Curtis and Cheeseman islands, Macauley Island and the largest, Raoul Island. They are the only part of New Zealand that is truly subtropical, but what interests me are the fishes, and they include tropical and temperate species as well as subtropical species.

I first visited these difficult-to-reach islands in 1985, when I made two trips in quick succession: the first on a fisheries research vessel, and just a month later as part of a private diving expedition on a small yacht, in the company of other marine biologists, including the late Roger Grace. I was fascinated by the presence of coral, and the relative lack of marine algae compared to mainland New Zealand. But mostly I was impressed by the abundance of Galapagos sharks (Carcharhinus galapagensis) and large spotted black grouper (Epinephelus daemelii), which can reach 170 cm in length. Because of the islands’ isolation, the spotted black grouper hadn’t been fished, and they were fearless and inquisitive. Roger took a photo of me with a grouper which seemed as curious about me as I was about it!

Kermadec panorama

Around mainland New Zealand, however, large species such as the grouper, along with hāpuku (Polyprion oxygeneios) and bass (P. americanus), were increasingly rare due to overfishing, and fishers were turning their attention to places such as the Kermadecs.

On my return to New Zealand, I wrote a report recommending that the seas around the Kermadec Islands be designated as a marine reserve, to protect the spotted black grouper, the intact assemblage of large fish and the pristine marine ecosystem. This added support to a previous suggestion and had the support of other marine biologists as well the New Zealand Underwater Association, and just five years later the Kermadec Islands Marine Reserve was gazetted. It covers 745,000 hectares, and includes the waters around all the islands and rocks, out to the edge of the Territorial Sea (12 nautical miles).

It was a delight to return to the islands in 1992, and to be able to dive in its fully protected waters, knowing the Galapagos sharks and spotted black groupers were safe.

Those early trips also sparked an interest in recording the fish species that I saw there, and I’ll write more about this in a future blog. In the meantime, I have just finished sharing 330 images of fishes from the Kermadec Islands to iNaturalist, taken during the five trips I have made to these remarkable isolated islands.

View all my Kermadec observations.

Julkaistu toukokuu 28, 2024 09:57 AP. käyttäjältä malcolm_francis malcolm_francis | 3 havaintoa | 1 kommentti | Jätä kommentti

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