Abstract
The accidental loss of vessels in the marine environment can provide habitat for biological organisms, yet little is known about the biological communities that develop on these ‘vessel reefs’ or how these communities compare to those on natural reefs. Through a collaboration between maritime archaeologists and marine ecologists, we examined the fish assemblages associated with 7 well-established (65 years submerged) WWII wrecks in Tanapag Lagoon, Saipan, and compared these to assemblages on nearby coral patch reefs. Wrecks supported fish assemblages with similar abundance, species richness, diversity and feeding group composition to natural reefs; however, species composition differed between the two reef types (R = 0.189–0.341). Larger wrecks supported more species-rich and diverse assemblages than smaller wrecks. Wrecks may also have affected fish abundance on adjacent patch reefs, with reefs adjacent to larger wrecks supporting higher abundances of fish than reefs adjacent to smaller wrecks. Results suggest that Saipan’s submerged WWII heritage now functions as effective artificial reef, despite not mimicking all aspects of surrounding coral reefs.
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Acknowledgements
We thank J. McKinnon and the staff and students from the 2010 Flinders University Maritime Archaeology Field School for access to wrecks and sampling assistance.
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Fowler, A.M., Booth, D.J. (2015). Fish Habitat Provided by Saipan’s WWII Submerged Heritage. In: McKinnon, J., Carrell, T. (eds) Underwater Archaeology of a Pacific Battlefield. SpringerBriefs in Archaeology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16679-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16679-7_10
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