Dive report: Rhodolith Bed Maria Island

South side of Maria Island
11:40am
High tide 11:30am
Depth 8m
Vis 5m, very windy recently

I have been hearing about how awesome rhodolith beds are for years but never seen one. I know they are an important and habitat with nursery / recruitment benefits and has been in decline for decades in the Hauraki Gulf. I find a lot of individual rhodoliths but never more than five in a square meter. It was very exciting to bump into this bed at the Noises. I did not measure it but it was bigger than 10x4m. I imagine it is protected from dredges by the adjacent rocky reef.

I was blown away by the complexity of it, the bed dramatically increases the complexity and surface area of the seafloor. The bed was associated with other dead shell and gravel. I took a lot of photos of it and was pleased to see juvenile tipa / scallops in the bed along with a lot of other life. I was worried about the algae / biofilm smothering the photosynthesising ability of the rhodoliths but they might be quite resilient to seasonal growths.

Posted on January 22, 2022 11:08 PM by shaun-lee