Satellite Mapping
The Karang Kapota Study - January 2002

Karang Kapota is an atoll off the southeast coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia. PCRF visited this atoll briefly in 1999 to make a brief assessment of its state of health. We returned in January 2002 to make a full satellite study of the atoll, under the supervision of Qamar Schuyler, former Scientific Coordinator on board the ship, and currently masters student at the College of Charleston, studying under Phillip Dustan. She brought an associate from Charleston, Anne Blair.

This underwater oasis lies just a few miles from the site of the images below, all taken on the reefs of Karang Kapota atoll in Indonesia. Some of the reef patches in the atoll's lagoon, like the one above, have been untouched.

We heard bomb blasts while we were on this dive, above, on the north wall of the atoll. Dynamite has become a prevalent form of fishing in Karang Kapota since the ship was here in 1999. The picture below shows a coral colony, representative of an entire area of the atoll which showed signs of having been blasted in the last few years, with craters in the reef structure, rubble and algae overgrowth.

What is happening in Karang Kapota is typical of the state of the reefs of South East Asia. Driven by local demand, market forces or an increasing scarcity of fish, fishermen are increasingly desperate to catch. Dynamite fishing, along with cyanide fishing, provides a means of cleaning up an area of the reef. Unfortunately, it is usually a one-off practice since neither method leaves little life behind, decimating not just the fish populations but also the coral colonies that support the populations in the first place.

During the course of our two week study in Karang Kapota, we dived and snorkeled for up to 8 hours a day, covering as much area of the reef as possible. Karang Kapota is a sizeable reef system, 11 miles long and 4 miles wide. With satellite images of the atoll in our hands, computer equipment on loan from the College of Charleston, a state-of-the-art handheld GPS, a fish finder depth-sounder, two underwater video cameras, we worked to first 'georeference' the satellite image, then to interpret the different color zones of the satellite images in terms of ecological zones differentiated according to the majority ground cover eg. sand flats, seagrass beds, rubble, hard coral etc.

The image on the left shows the satellite image of the atoll superimposed with a nautical chart. It shows the anomalies between existing documentation on reefs eg. charts and their reality. The image on the right is the satellite image broken down into different ecological zones, created by Qamar Schuyler upon return from Indonesia to the College of Charleston.

We collected field data during the day, then at night Qamar entered the information into her computer for correlation to the satellite image. For the first time, our ground truthing efforts on board the research vessel were in real time. We were able to achieve results, out in the field, anchored right in the middle of the very atoll we were studying.