Apra Harbor

Answers From A Marine Biologist

What about the fish in the area?

The DEIS claims that there would be, “No long term impact to fishes on the reef.” They make this claim by stating that the existing fish stocks in Apra Harbor are so low that when they destroy the coral in dredging, the fish will be able to find existing habitat on other parts of the reef. Thus, fish won’t die, they will just move. This is misleading: They are assuming that the fish stocks will never recover. If there was better management of the fish there and the fish stocks were healthy, then the fish would not be able to find another home. Why should we assume that the fish stocks would never recover? The truth is, if you remove the coral habitat, you have removed the total area of habitat for fish and permanently reduced the number of possible fish living in that area.

But reefs can grow again, can’t they?

DoD only used coral percent cover (and a very rough estimate of reef structure) for the Habitat Equivalency Analysis, instead of using the numbers and sizes of coral colonies.  Coral percent cover really doesn’t describe the important attributes of a reef that one would need to replace. Without knowing the sizes of those corals, you really have no idea how old that reef is.  This is hugely important, because an older reef will require much more compensatory mitigation than a younger reef because it will take much longer for the replacement reef to reach the age of the destroyed reef.  It was proposed by biologists that this data be collected from the beginning, but the suggestion was pushed aside at the last minute.

But there are reefs that aren’t being dredged. They won’t be impacted, right?

In general, the DEIS minimizes the potential effects of sedimentation.  It states that because the corals in this area experience more sedimentation than corals in other areas, they should respond fairly well to the short-term dredging operations.  However, this does not take into account the idea that many corals live at the edge of their environmental tolerances, whether we’re talking about temperature (why many species bleach so readily), nutrients, sedimentation rates, or some other stressor.  They expend all the energy they can to grow, reproduce, fend off disease, re-grow dead tissue, etc. given the present rates of sedimentation.  To then add to that equation another unnatural source of sediment in addition to the present rates of sedimentation, and something has to give. The model used in the DEIS appears to overestimate the effectiveness of silt curtains in preventing sediment from escaping.

A silt curtain will be used to protect the reefs. Won’t that work?

The DEIS claims that the screens laid during the dredging will block most of the silt from covering the surrounding reef. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that silt curtains aren’t nearly as effective as they claim. First of all, they don’t reach all the way to the bottom – usually only to about 30 feet – so quite a lot of sediment escapes through the bottom. There have been multiple reports of large sediment plumes escaping the silt curtain at Kilo Wharf. These plumes could come from the bottom of the curtain as well as through the frequent tears in the fabric.

Ten Things You Should Know About Apra Harbor Reefs and the Proposed Dredging Actions

1. There are almost twice as many coral species in the CVN project area alone than there are across the entire Caribbean!

2. Apra Harbor is the only deep water, protected lagoonal area in the entire Marianas Archipelago. Damage to these areas due to direct dredging and indirect sedimentation would reduce Guam’s marine biodiversity.

3. Because of the unique and specific conditions, the coral reefs in Apra Harbor host unique reef assemblages. In other words, there is no other place like it.

4. There are certain species of coral in Apra Harbor that have yet to be identified and could possibly be a new discovery to the entire world.

5. In order to maintain the dredged channel, repeated dredging in the future would be necessary. This repeated dredging would pose a long-term, continual threat to the Apra Harbor reefs.

6. Impact analysis does not consider impacts to reefs deeper than 60 ft, which actually represent a very large area of reef habitat.

7. DEIS ignores results of survey methods comparison study (Appendix J) carried out by federal and local agency biologists, which suggest that the methods used by the Navy consultant are not appropriate for an impact assessment.

8. The sediment plume modeling was developed using only two days’ worth of oceanographic data, so it’s unlikely that the conditions on those two days adequately represent the average conditions in the harbor

9. The sediment plume modeling was limited to 24-hour periods, so the cumulative impacts of dredging near a given reef couldn’t be directly calculated.

10. The most recent – and most relevant – coral reef studies conducted on Guam are often not used, and instead older studies are used to defend claims that the impacts won’t be especially large or the reefs will recover quickly from impacts.

We All Want to Improve the Economy

Billion dollar economies negatively affected:

Tourism

Fishing

Recreation

Marine Biology Research (largely untapped economy)

Eco-Tourism

Is it worth it?

Guam’s reefs provide an immense number of benefits to the people of Guam, and are integral to the long-term viability of culture, tradition, and the economy.  They provide food, protection from storms, recreational opportunities, are crucial to Guam’s tourism economy, and are important to local customs and traditions.  It is difficult to justify the planned destruction of such a large area of reef, whether “unique,” “special” or not, when the long-term outlook for coral reefs around the world is bleak.

Basics:

• DoD wants to develop a deep water Aircraft Carrier Port in Apra Harbor with Polaris Point being their preferred alternative.
• The goal is to be able to host more frequent and longer port of calls for Aircraft Carriers serving in the Pacific Region.
• DoD estimates at least 63 days per year of hosting a carrier at the new port.

Building Requirements:

• Infrastructure improvements at Polaris Point would be necessary, including; power, wastewater, and water supply
• Roughly 1.1 million cubic yards of dredged material would need to be removed from the inner and outer Apra Harbor in order to allow the Carriers to inter into the Polaris Point area.
• Mechanical dredging would likely be used to remove the material.

Impacts:

• Direct impacts to the reef include the direct removal of roughly 71.18 acres of reef, with about 25 acres of that having some level of coral coverage. This reef would be permanently removed and destroyed.
• Indirect impacts include the possibility for the loss of surrounding coral due to sediment redistribution onto the surrounding reefs (suspended sediments will carry onto the other reefs smothering the. (Coral needs sunlight to live and sediment blocks the sunlight killing the reef).

• Other indirect impacts include runoff from land based construction activities, increased runoff from loss of vegetation and replacement by concrete.
• Increase in vehicle traffic has potential to increase oil and gas runoff.

Proposed Mitigation:

• DEIS supports the construction of artificial reefs as a mitigation or replacement of the destroyed reefs. This is not the local governments preferred mitigation.

** Artificial reefs have a mixed success rate and are rarely used to replace the lost function of a natural reef system.

• DEIS proposes planting trees and vegetation on the east side of the island as a proposed method of reducing sedimentation and runoff on the east side of the island. (The goal is to reclaim damaged reef habitat on the east side by reduced sediment, allowing reef to grow again.)

Problem: Guam has a chronic problem of illegal fires burning thousands of acres on the island’s east side. This is the major source of runoff and sedimentation covering the reefs on the east side. Planting vegetation would be in vain if there was not an effective way to stop the illegal fires. In essence there would be the loss of Apra Harbor reefs, millions of dollars spent on vegetation on the east side, and no improvement of the east side reefs due to fires.