A management of coral reef refuge in off-shore Gulf of Thailand

The large-scale impacts on coral bleaching due to high seawater temperature have increased dramatically. A widespread of coral mortalities resulted from the severe coral bleaching events was occurred along the Andaman Sea and... [ view full abstract ]

The large-scale impacts on coral bleaching due to high seawater temperature have increased dramatically. A widespread of coral mortalities resulted from the severe coral bleaching events was occurred along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand causing the decrease of coral reef fertility as well as their ecosystem services. However, some off-shore reefs, for example the Losin pinnacle, were still alive after the coral bleaching events due to the water temperature in the location was not much changed. This is recognized as a ‘thermal refugia’ for corals. Therefore, the collaboration between the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources and universities was built in order to establish those thermal refugia as the Marine Protected Area (MPA). This study was a part of MPA proposal resulted from the surveys of coral reef ecosystem at Losin. A checklist of reef building corals was produced during August 2017 showing a total of fifty-nine coral species, mainly covered by Acropora spp., for examples, A. intermedia, A. grandis, A. muricata, A. cytherea, A. cytherea, followed by Porites spp. and Montipora spp. This area should be reserved as a refugia to maintain an abundance of coral population. The Losin pinnacle should be considered as a restricted area through appropriate conservation strategies. The outputs obtained from this study actively supports Thailand coral reef management plan under the crisis situation.