Teluleu marine protected area baseline assessment

With the increasing demand of marine resources throughout the world, it is important to establish a foundation to determine how the use of resources is affecting the health of marine habitats. An initial assessment of Peleliu's Teluleu protected area was conducted to determine baseline data for long term adaptive management of the protected areas in Palau. Three randomly selected sites were chosen and surveyed. The assessment is specifically geared to establish initial data for the benthic community, coral recruit, commercially important invertebrates, and the abundance and biomass of commercially important fish. Teluleu is a seagrass meadow located just off the main dock in Peleliu. Results show that there is a variation of fish and biomass which means that Teluleu is a habitat for smaller juvenile fish as well as large, possibly reproductive fish. This falls in line with the goals and objective of Peleliu's management plan. During the survey, two invertebrates were observed and coral recruits were recorded in one of the three surveyed sites. This surveyed MPA is predominately a seagrass meadow, being made up of T. hemprichii and E. acroides 2015 Funding: NOAA CRCP, NOAA National Ocean Service,; project number: 183; NOS (National Ocean Service) Library Public Domain 1936