South side of Maria Island
11:40am
High tide 11:30am
Depth 8m
Vis 5m, very windy recently
I have been hearing about how awesome rhodolith beds are for years but never seen one. I know they are an important and habitat with nursery / recruitment benefits and has been in decline for decades in the Hauraki Gulf. I find a lot of individual rhodoliths but never more than five in a square meter. It was very exciting to bump into this bed at the Noises. I did not measure it but it was bigger than 10x4m. I imagine it is protected from dredges by the adjacent rocky reef.
I was blown away by the complexity of it, the bed dramatically increases the complexity and surface area of the seafloor. The bed was associated with other dead shell and gravel. I took a lot of photos of it and was pleased to see juvenile tipa / scallops in the bed along with a lot of other life. I was worried about the algae / biofilm smothering the photosynthesising ability of the rhodoliths but they might be quite resilient to seasonal growths.
In a rhodolith bed
Possibly Lithothamnion indicum. Large bed, >10x4m.
Comments
Awesome. We should map it ;)
Very cool, I've never seen them alive
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