RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN DISTRIBUTIONS OF CORALS AND PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS IN AMITORI BAY, IRIOMOTE ISLAND, JAPAN

Abstract

 This study aims at investigating relationships between distributions of corals and physical environments in Amitori Bay, Iriomote Island, Japan. Field observations in Amitori Bay were performed to obtain the data of the distributions of corals, water temperature, inflow rate from rivers, wind speeds and so on. Moreover, an ocean current model CCM and a wave model were used to analyze the spatial and temporal distributions of the fine-grained sediments and the wave heights.
 It was shown that the forms and sizes of the corals are largely different depending on the locations in Amitori Bay. This is because the locations respectively have different physical environments. Furthermore, the results of the numerical analyses showed that the distributions of the corals are greatly influenced by the effects of the high waves and the fine-grained sediment transport.