Typhoon Morakot was the deadliest typhoon to impact Taiwan in recorded history. It attained a peak intensity with winds of 150 km/h on Aug. 7-9, 2009, which is equivalent to a category 1 hurricane on the Saffr- Simpson Hurricane Scale. The storm produced copious amounts of rainfall, peaking at 2777 mm, surpassing the previous record of 1736 mm set by Typhoon Herb in 1996. The extreme amount of rain and strong winds of typhoon Morakot not only triggered enormous mudslides and severe flooding, but also created strong waves that damaged reefs of southern Taiwan. The mean live coral coverage at Siangjiao Bay (SJB; 21°55'432"N, 120°49'788"E), a marine protected area (MPA) in the Kenting National Park (KNP) in southern Taiwan, was reduced from 58.80% to 18.54% (based on video-transect surveys) before and after the typhoon hit these reefs. The SJB coral communities were in fair to good condition with a mean coral coverage of > 45% from 1987 to 1997 (Dai et al. 1998 1999), and peaked at 69.90% in 2003 (Kuo 2007). However, after being hit by typhoon Morakot, large colonies of Porites lutea were found overturned at 7-8 m in depth (Fig. 1A). Coverage of the dominant coral species, Montipora aequituberculata (Fig. 1B), sharply decreased from 32.72% to 5.39%, and most areas were transformed into bare rocks covered by turf algae (Fig. 1C). Recovery of coral coverage in the SJB MPA to pre-Morakot levels might take decades or even longer, particularly with the increasing frequency and intensity of typhoons that are expected to occur under the impact of climate change (Solomon et al. 2007). http://zoolstud.sinica.edu.tw/Journals/50.1/85.pdf Animal Miraculum Damage to the Reefs of Siangjiao Bay Marine Protected Area of Kenting National Park, Southern Taiwan during Typhoon Morakot Chao-Yang Kuo 1 , Pei-Jie Meng 2 , Ping-Ho Ho 3 , Jih-Terng Wang 4 , Jeng-Ping Chen 5 , Yuh-Wen Chiu 6 , Hsing-Juh Lin 7 ,Yang-Chi Chang 8 , Tung-Yung Fan 2 , and Chaolun Allen Chen 1,9,10, * 1 Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Nangang, Taipei 115, Taiwan 2 National Museum of Marine Biology/Aquarium, Checheng, Pingtung 944, Taiwan 3 Institute of Fishery and Environmental Biology, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung 202, Taiwan 4 Institute of Biotechnology, Tajen University, Pingtung 907, Taiwan 5 Taiwan Ocean Research Institute, National Applied Research Laboratories, Taipei 106, Taiwan 6 Department of Biomedical Science and Environmental Biology, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung 807, Taiwan 7 Department of Life Sciences, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan 8 Institute of Marine Environment, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung 804, Taiwan 9 Department of Life Science, National Taitung University, Taitung, 950, Taiwan 10 Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan (Accepted January 7, 2010) *To whom correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed. Tel: 886-2-27899549. Fax: 886-2-27858059. E-mail:cac@gate.sinica.edu.tw 85 Fig. 1. Impact of typhoon Morakot on Siangjiao Bay, Kenting National Park, southern Taiwan. (A) Large Porites colony (2.5 m in diameter) overturned by strong waves. (B) Dense coverage of the foliaceous coral, M. aequituberculata, before typhoon Morakot. (C) Bare rocks covered by turf algae after typhoon Morakot. (A) (B) (C) Acknowledgments: Many thanks go to the National Science Council and Kenting National Park Administration for funding coral reef long-term ecological research. This is the Coral Reef Evolutionary Ecology and Genetics Group, Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan contribution no. 60. REFERENCES Dai CF, YT Chen, KM Kuo, CH Chuang. 1998. Changes of coral communities in Nanwan Bay, Kenting National Park: 1987-1997. J. Natl. Park. 8: 79-99. (in Chinese with English abstract) Dai CF, KM Kuo, YT Chen, CH Chuang. 1999. Changes of coral communities on the east and west coast of the Kenting National Park. J. Natl. Park. 9: 112-130. (in Chinese with English abstract) Kuo CY. 2007. The structure and variation of benthic communities in coral reefs of southern Taiwan. MSc thesis, Institute of Marine Biology, National Sun Yet-sen Univ., Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 71 pp. (in Chinese with English abstract) Solomon S, D Qin, M Manning, Z Chen, M Marquis, KB Averyt et al. 2007. Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. View publication stats View publication stats