Moloka'i: The Hawaiian Islands' Longest Continuous Fringing Reef
By Nathaniel Deaton
Moloka'i Island is home to the longest continuous fringing reef among those within the Hawaiian Archipelago. The island and reef are traditionally venerated by many Native Hawaiians and consider Hina, the Goddess of Fisherman, to have given birth to the coral reefs subsequent marine wildlife. It's easy to see why fishermen of Moloka'i built many artificial fishponds on the shallow reef beds. The wide expanse of these ecosystems provided ample sustenance to the local population and fed into increasing importance that Hinaalo had over as the Mother Goddess of the Hawaiian people.
Marine scientists often classify reefs in one of three categories. They include barrier, fringe, and atoll formations. Barrier and fringing reefs are similar in that they both grow seaword and retain border definitions similar to the surrounding island coastlines. Although both barrier and fringing reefs share this trait, barrier reefs are further separated by the shoreline by a larger expanse of water whereas fringing reefs typically hug the shoreline and slope upwards into beaches. The reef to the furthest east of Moloka'i turns into Murphy Beach - a popular destination among snorkelers and thrill-seeking surfer bros.
Thanks goes to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for providing the survey rasters for the bathymetry in the Hawaiian Islands via NOAA's Bathymetric Data Viewer. Reef names were extracted via OpenStreetMap. Data accessed December, 2020.
Tools used in this project
- PostGIS was used to store/query the national dataset.
- Data is shown on Mapbox web map with geolocation services enabled. If the map got popular it would require a fee to use.
- GDAL and QGIS 3.2 to convert raster elevation units and create contours.
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