Rose Atoll :: A World Treasure in Peril :: Part I
by Phillip Colla and Harrison “Skip” Stubbs, Ph.D.
This article originally appeared in the Spring 1997 issue of Ocean Realm magazine.
In August 1995 a thirteen-member inter-agency scientific team visited Rose Atoll National Wildlife Refuge to assess injury caused by the 1993 grounding of a Taiwanese fishing vessel.
While the specific injuries to Rose Atoll are unique and the coralline algae composition of the atoll is uncommon, many other isolated atolls worldwide face similar dangers. It is their remote nature, and the unique assemblages of life that they often support, that make such atolls special. Yet their isolation also means that little, if any, enforcement to protect them from damage by fishing and shipping activities exists.
The authors collected photographic and videotape evidence in support of litigation and ongoing injury assessment and research efforts. Rose Atoll NWR is jointly managed by the United States and American Samoa governments.
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| Rose Islet. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00839 |
Rose islet and Pisonia trees. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00830 |
Remote, tiny and unprotected, Rose Atoll stands alone at the eastern extreme of the Samoan archipelago, 14 degrees south of the equator and southernmost among National Wildlife Refuges. Among the world’s smallest and most pristine atolls, Rose is a nearly square reef surrounding an azure lagoon dotted with coralline bommie towers. Tiny Rose Island rises above the waterline at the atoll’s eastern corner. Rose Atoll’s beauty lies not only in its geometry but in the vibrant pink hue of its reefs – it is one of the few atolls whose primary element of construction is the pink calcareous coralline alga Porolithon.
Rose’s reef system is of the classic spur-and-groove type: massive coralline shoulders extending outward from the atoll separated at regular intervals by deep troughs, grooves through which open ocean wave energy is funneled back to sea. The shallow reef flat surrounding Rose’s interior lagoon is broken only at the atoll’s northern corner by an ava, an opening through which water, elevated within the lagoon by a constant influx of waves, rushes out in a perpetual current. Where the submarine outer reef graduates from a ledge to reef flat is the forereef, is an abrupt ten-foot wall of cement-hard coralline algae just beneath the waterline. Crucial to the health of the entire atoll, the forereef acts as a structural armoring that reflects and dissipates wave energy and protects the reef flat from erosion. Injury to the forereef could change gross reef structures and alter established current patterns about the atoll, allowing new avenues of erosion to threaten the atoll’s fragile island.
An Eden in the center the Pacific, Rose Atoll is lonely and beautiful, but virgin no more. The pristine nature of Rose Atoll was violated in October 1993 when the Taiwanese fishing vessel Jin Shiang Fa ran aground on the atoll’s southwest arm. The destructive effect of this event on Rose Atoll was, and continues to be, many-faceted and difficult to quantify.
