Abstract:
Degradation of coral reef in Indonesia is very serious. One-way to overcome its problem standing up today that with developing the coral reef rehabilitation program. In the attempt of rehabilitation, the method of artificial reef and coral transplantation were applied. Coral transplantation has been studied in waters of Kepulauan Seribu, Jepara, and Bali. To supporting coral transplantation, it’s needed of back-up data research particularly on techniques, specific kind of coral which viable and grow fast, and identification of site characteristic suit with each coral. The study aims are to analyze growth response of P. verrucosa in various sites and zones of coral reef and to determine some environmental parameters that influence the growth rate of P. verrucosa. There were two sites of observation and each site has three zones. Each units of experiment was placed in each site and zone with three replications. The coral growth observed after two months transplantation. The growth rate of P. verrucosa in different sites and zones of coral reef or their interaction analyzed by analysis of variance (factorial patterns); and to determine environmental parameters (habitat characteristics) that influence the growth of P. verrucosa used multivariate analysis (Principal Component Analysis), which confirmed with Cluster Analysis. This research showed that there were not significance growth rate across sites (P≥0.05), but across zones, founded significant (P≤0.05). The effect of site and zone interaction showed that the high growth rate of P. verrucosa was found in both sites, which transplanted in zone 1 and 2. This was closely associated with environmental parameters, i.e. high pH, temperature, current velocity, sedimentation, phosphate, dissolved oxygen, salinity and ammonia, and low TOM and turbidity.
