Data on the recovery of Palau's Coral Reefs
Between September 10, 2013 – October 3, 2013 the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation conducted a
research mission to Tonga, focusing on coral reefs surrounding the islands in the Ha'apai group (Sep 11-21),
Vava'u (Sep 22-28) and Niuaatoputapu (Sep 29-Oct 1). The mission included coral reef assessments, coral reef
research, habitat mapping, and educational activities. The objectives of the mission were to:
The global decline of coral reefs had led to calls for strategies that reconcile biodiversity conservation and fisheries benefits. Still considerable gaps in our understanding of the spatial ecology of ecosystem services remain. We combined spatial information on larval dispersal networks and estimated of human pressure to test the importance of connectivity for ecosystem service provision. We found that reefs receiving larvae from highly connected dispersal corridors were associated with high fish species richness.