Tomas (Tom) Tomascik
Tomas (Tom) Tomascik
PhD McGill University, Oceanography
Independent researcher
About
146
Publications
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Introduction
I’m a marine scientist with over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical marine environments.
Additional affiliations
October 1987 - May 1996
Position
- Scientific Officer
Description
- 1993–1996. Senior author of The Ecology of the Indonesian Seas. Environmental Management Development in Indonesia (EMDI) Project 1989–1992. Senior Advisor, Marine and Coastal Resources Management. Environmental Management Development in Indonesia (EMDI) Project 1987–1989. Environmental Advisor. Centre for Environmental Studies, Universitas Diponegoro, Semarang, Indonesia and EMDI Project
June 2000 - June 2019
Position
- Faculty Member
Description
- Adjunct Professor • Advised, supervised and supported graduate students. • Taught Biology 405, Marine Ecology (2004–2006).
January 1996 - August 1996
Position
- Visiting Faculty
Description
- Tropical Marine & Coastal Ecosystems
Publications
Publications (146)
Fourteen environmental variables were monitored at seven locations along the west coast of Barbados on a weekly basis over a one-year period, 1981 to 1982. The physicochemical and biological data indicate that an environmental gradient exists as a result of increased eutrophication of coastal waters. Growth rates (linear extension) of Montastrea an...
Baseline information on the distribution and abundance of Haliotis kamtschatkana was obtained throughout the Broken Group Islands (BGI) in shallow- (2-5 m) and deep-water (6-9 m) habitats. The study demonstrates that abundance of northern (pinto) abalone varied spatially throughout the area and with depth. The shallow habitats in the study area sup...
Seven fringing reef complexes were chosen along the leeward coast (west) of Barbados to study the effects of eutrophication processes upon the scleractinian coral assemblages. The structure of scleractinian coral communities was studied along an eutrophication gradient with a quantitative sampling method (line transect) in terms of species composit...
St. Martin’s Island is a small sedimentary island situated at the southernmost part of Bangladesh (20°37.6′ N and 92°19.3′ E). The island is surrounded by rocky reefs composed of Neogene bedrock consisting of moderately hard and soft sandstones and conglomerates belonging to the Tipam Sandstone (Islam in Bangladesh J Univ Sheffield Geol Soc 7:269–2...
Corals are invertebrate animals that belong to the phylum Cnidaria, a diverse and fascinating group of colorful creatures. Cnidarians come in a wide range of hues, sizes, and shapes, but what sets them apart is that they all have a main body cavity with a one mouth opening surrounded by stinging tentacles. Each coral animal is known as a polyp, and...
The Indonesian archipelago is a tectonically active region, and thus contains many islands with active volcanoes. There are over 500 known volcanoes in Indonesia, of which 80 are considered as active and 50 are in the solfataric and fumarole stage. It has often been suggested that active volcanism generally inhibits coral reef development, and this...
Located between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and between the Asian and Australian continents, the seas of the Indonesian Archipelago have a significant role in global weather patterns and oceanic circulation. The dynamic interplay between geological, physical, chemical, and biological processes, past and present, has given rise to one of the most...
Located between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and between the Asian and Australian continents, the seas of the Indonesian Archipelago have a significant role in global weather patterns and oceanic circulation. The dynamic interplay between geological, physical, chemical, and biological processes, past and present, has given rise to one of the most...
A short video footage of some of the inhabitants in the Bull kelp forest found in the coastal waters of British Columbia, Canada.
The Indonesian archipelago is one of the most tectonically active region on the planet, and thus contains many islands with active volcanoes. There are over 500 known volcanoes in Indonesia, of which 80 are considered as active and 50 are in the solfataric and fumarole stage.
It has often been suggested that active volcanism generally inhibits cor...
The fabled "Spice Islands" of the East Indies were the original source of precious nutmeg and clove, whose trade had a significant impact on European history. Today, Banda Islands, because of their remote location, are among the very few areas in the world where the marine and coastal resources, primarily coral reefs and seagrass beds, are still in...
This 1993 footage from Indonesia documents night time feeding of an aggregation of a benthic ctenophore, most likely Coeloplana sp., on a soft coral (probably Sinularia sp.). If this indeed is Coeloplana sp., it would belong to order Platyctenida, which is the main group of benthic ctenophores. The fine translucent strands which are emanating from...
The short Photogallery article in “Galaxea” (open access: https://doi.org/10.3755/galaxea.G25-5) documents the presence of a scleractinian coral in a tropical microtidal marine anchialine setting. Considering the wide interest in ocean acidification, as a result of climate change, the low pH anchialine marine lake on Kakaban Island offers a natural...
In 1993 we visited an active submarine volcano Banua Wuhu (aka Mahengetang) in the Sangihe ensimatic arc. This submarine volcano rises from the sea floor at a depth of 400 m to 5 m below sea level. When we visited Banua Wuhu in 1993 it was in a solfataric stage. We were amazed to find vibrant coral communities that colonized the slopes of this acti...
“Geologists have a saying – rocks remember.”
- Neil Armstrong
Going over some of my old underwater videos I came across a 1993 tape from Pulau Mahengetang located in the Sangihe Archipelago, Indonesia. During the expedition we thought that diving on the dome of an active submarine volcano (Banua Wuhu), about 600 m from Mahengetang, would be the hi...
St. Martin's Island (Bangladesh), a biodiversity hotspot in the northeastern Bay of Bengal, continues to be misunderstood by many scientists. There seems to be continued confusion surrounding the geologic history of St. Martin's Island and its intertidal and subtidal geomorphology. St. Martin's Island is a sedimentary continental island surrounded...
Thalassodendron ciliatum, Bangai archipelago, Indonesia
This video taken in 1994 documents extensive beds of Thalassodendron ciliatum in the Bangai archipelago, Indonesia. Its thick rhizome allows this species of seagrass to colonize high energy environments on many high energy coral reefs. Extensive Thalassodendron beds form hotspots of productio...
This review is in response to Ara et al. (2021) published in the Journal of the Indian Remote Sensing Society on the impact of tourism on land use land cover (LULC) and land surface temperature (LST) on St. Martin’s Island, Bangladesh (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-021-01389-4). Ara et al. provide new information on temporal changes in land use an...
This is a comment on a conference presentation by “Sharmin Ara, K. M. Ashraful Islam, Ashad Uj Jaman Alif 2020. Spatio-temporal relationship of LST, LULC and NDVI in Saint Martin’s Island of Bay of Bengal”
This is the link to the Ara et al. (2020) presentation:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338908067_Spatio-temporal_relationship_of_LST...
These figures are part of Tomascik (1997) St. Martin's Report
In our 1994 Tropical Biodiversity paper we were the first to document and report that unlike the jellyfish- eating sea anemone (Entacmaea medusivora) in Palau that feeds on one species of jellyfish (Mastigias papua), the sea anemone found in Kakaban lagoon is not only much larger but that it also feeds on 2 other scyphozoans, namely Cassiopea ornat...
The geologic history of Pulau Kakaban, an uplifted atoll, was first described by the Dutch geologist P.H. Kuenen in 1933 based on his visit to the island during the Dutch-organized 1929-1930 Snellius-I Expedition in eastern Indonesia. We were fortunate to get the opportunity to be the first to study the aquatic ecology of the lagoon in 1993.
Durin...
Video of a derelict fishing gear removal in the Strait of Georgia.
This is the reference section for "The Ecology of Indonesian Seas" Part I and Part II.
Underwater video of an iron ooid field. An unconsolidated submarine deposit of iron ooids and pisoids, located offshore the volcanic island Mahengetang, Indonesia, is described herein. The deposit occurs in a shallow-marine setting, in an area characterized by venting of hydrothermal fluids and expulsion of gas across the sediment-water interface....
Pulau Gunung Api lava flow, Banda Islands
This video was taken in 1994 on the lava flow on the north-eastern slope of Gunung Api in Banda Islands. The volcano erupted in 1988 and the lava flow spilled over a portion of the fringing reef. The coral community that you are seeing in this video demonstrates rapid colonization and growth of coral on the...
Entacmaea medusivora (?) feeding on a jellyfish
Anthropogenic threats to shallow-water coastal ecosystems such as coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangroves, intertidal mudflats rocky shores, and beaches (among others) are numerous. Addressing the serious issue of marine and coastal degradation in Indonesia will require development and implementation of new management plans for the coastal and marine...
Large colour photographs for Part II.
The Indonesian Archipelago is one of the richest marine biodiversity areas in the world. While the total biodiversity of any particular area is a function of a complex set of physical, chemical and biological interactions, as well as geological history, it will be useful here to discuss biodiversity at two levels, namely at the ecosystem level and...
Indonesia with a population of over 182 million people is the world's largest archipelagic state (KLH 1992). With over 17,500 islands (only 6,000 inhabited) and one of the longest coastlines in the world, Indonesia has jurisdiction over 5.8 million km2 of tropical seas within its Exclusive Economic Zone (Polunin 1983; KLH 1992; Sloan and Sugandhy 1...
Seagrasses have a wide distribution throughout the world's oceans, being absent only from the polar seas, although the genera Phyllospadix and Zostera are present as far north as the Bering Sea and as far south as the Tasman Sea. From the cold subpolar regions to the equator, seagrasses inhabit a variety of shallow-water coastal habitats where they...
"The beaches on that coast I had come to visit are treacherous and sandy and the tides are always shifting things about among the mangrove roots... A world like that is not really natural... Parts of it are neither land nor sea and so everything is moving from one element to another, wearing uneasily the queer transitional bodies that life adopts i...
The Indonesian Archipelago plays a key role in global biogeochemical cycles, and forms a barrier as well as a passage for pelagic organisms between the Pacific and Indian oceans (Brinton 1979; Schalk 1987). In addition to their significance in global ocean productivity, the archipelagic seas contain important biogeographical zones that are still po...
Guilcher (1988) used the term "bank reefs" to classify a number of reef types within a single group, of which the patch reefs were considered to be the smallest. We take a slightly different approach, and follow the classification system proposed by Hopley (1982, 1983) for the reefs of the Great Barrier Reef. Hopley's (1982) classification system i...
The offshore coral reefs of Indonesian Archipelago exhibit a high degree of geomorphological complexity. Reef types present range from the classical Darwinian barrier reefs and atolls, to a variety of shelf reefs (e.g., patch and barrier) and oceanic platform reefs. The vast majority of these reefs are found in the central and eastern parts of the...
Perhaps no geologic structure made by living organisms has fascinated coral reef scientists during the past 150 years as much as have the atolls, jewels of the oceans. Atolls are widely scattered throughout the tropical and subtropical Indo-Pacific, with a few in the tropical western Atlantic. Darwin (1842) provided the first detailed account of th...
Coral cays are generally referred to as low islands constructed entirely from the biogenic materials of the reef itself (Hopley 1982), and are a common physiographic and ecologic zone of many reefs throughout the archipelago (fig. 17.1) and fig. 17.2). The purely biogenic origin of coral cay sediments, from the underlying reef, and the absence of c...
"With respect to fringing, or shore reefs, there is little in their structure which needs explanation; and their name expresses their comparatively small extension". Darwin 1842 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX This section of the book introduces the various fringing coral reefs and their distribution throughout the arch...
"Geology teaches us that the surface of the land and the distribution of land and water is everywhere slowly changing. It further teaches us that the forms of life which inhabit that surface have, during every period of which we possess any record, been also slowly changing."
Wallace 1869 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX...
There have been many inspired literary works written in the past that touched upon the beauty and the intricacies of coral reefs. The diversity of types, shapes and sizes of Indonesian coral reefs, as well as the outstanding richness of the various plant and animal species that live in, on and above these unique biogenic structures, has fascinated...
"Situated upon the equator, and bathed by the tepid water of the great tropical oceans, this region enjoys a climate more uniformly hot and moist than almost any other part of the globe, and teams with natural productions which are elsewhere unknown." Wallace 1869 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The tropical Indo-Pacific oc...
"Deep trenches, high mountain chains, rows of volcanoes, deep sea basins and innumerable coral islands form a complexity of phenomena which are not found over such an extended area in any other part of the world." Wyrtki 1961 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The vast Indonesian Archipelago of over 17,000 islands spans the e...
The Indonesian Archipelago is one of the most complex marine domains on the planet. The complexity of the Indonesian marine environment (i.e., physical, chemical and biological) is a reflection of its geologic history and atmospheric-oceanic interactions. Indonesian seas are among the most productive in the world, and support important coastal and...
This is the Table of Contents for Part I of The Ecology of the Indonesian Sea
Prior to 1911, very little was known about the nature or the general distribution of coral reefs within the Indonesian Archipelago. The earliest synthesis of information on the distribution and the type of coral reefs in the archipelago appeared in Darwin's 1842 monumental work on the structure and evolution of coral reefs, which also included the...
Even though scleractinian corals are the primary builders of present-day coral reefs, skeletal material of other groups, both plant and animal, is incorporated into the construction of the reef matrix. In fact, incorporation, cementation and consolidation of all these calcareous materials, including the corals, is a primary requirement of reef buil...
The Protozoa is a diverse assemblage of single-celled organisms found in most aquatic environments sustaining life. Foraminifera are shell-bearing (i.e., test) rhizopods (Order Foraminiferida), that are one of the most abundant groups of small marine and estuarine protozoa (Phleger 1960; Lee 1974; Bé 1977; Boersma 1978). In addition to the foramini...
"Reefs, the greatest structures made by life on earth, seem ageless, immovable and indestructible. Yet they are none of these things. Rather, they are the end products of a combination of geological and climatic events which have acted to change the face of the earth, as well as the products of an evolutionary process which started well before the...
To gain an appreciation of the diverse nature of coral reef systems in the vast Indonesian archipelago, some understanding of basic coral taxonomy and biology is helpful. This is especially true for systems where one particular assemblage of organisms can be considered as the "ecological dominants". Reef-building corals (Scleractinia) are such a gr...
Like many other biological systems, coral reef communities are subjected to a variety of environmental disturbances of varying intensity, frequency and duration (Pearson 1981; Huston 1985; Karlson and Hurd 1993). The nature and magnitude of impacts associated with the various natural disturbances, therefore, also varies with the nature and intensit...
"The fundamental problem in supplying a terminology for reefs is that it is, in effect, a taxonomy of reef forms, but a taxonomy derived from imperfect and perhaps biased knowledge of the range and complexity of reef phenomena". Stoddart 1978 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Since the early works of Molengraaff (1927), three...
In the autumn of 2010 and winter of 2011, Parks Canada used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and towed
underwater camera to video tape benthic (bottom) habitat in the thirteen most heavily used recreational boat
anchorages within Gulf Islands National Park Reserve of Canada (GINPR). Three valued ecosystem components (VECs) were identified based on...
Assessment of Northern abalone recruits to evaluate the effectiveness of wild abalone brood-stock transplants for population rebuilding efforts in the Broken Group Islands of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve of Canada.
Large, mobile invertebrates are an important component on temperate subtidal rocky habitats. The Northern abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana) is distributed from Alaska to California along the west of coast of North America. Historically, H. kamtschatkana was widely distributed in British Columbia with preference to semi-exposed to exposed coastal roc...
Monitoring for ecological integrity is paramount in Canada’s national parks. Here research must have minimal ecological impact and use non-lethal, non-intrusive methods. This study describes species biodiversity, abundance, distribution, and ecological relationships of fish from inshore habitats in Pacific Rim, a national park reserve with a marine...
One of the five key objectives of the National Recovery Strategy for the Northern Abalone in British Columbia (2002) is to “undertake research and rebuilding experiments”. Both the strategy and the draft Action Plan (2003) prioritize investigations of “the effectiveness of aggregating adults in and from different habitats for future population rebu...
Evaluate methods that can be used by Park managers, in NPRs and proposed NMCAs in British Columbia, to: 1) objectively assess and monitor the spatial and temporal variability in marine biodiversity; 2) include biodiversity data in addressing zoning and representivity issues.
Baseline studies aimed at assessing the ecological integrity of marine ecosystems are necessary for the implementation of ecosystem-based management. This research addresses issues related to cumulative human impacts in Grice Bay, which is located within the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. The focus of this study is population dynamics of Neotry...
In oligotrophic settings, the d15N of reef nutrient sources and light availability have both been identified as factors affecting the d15N of coral tissue (Muscatineand Kaplan 1994; Yamamuro et al. 1995; Heikoop et al.1998; Sammarco et al. 1999). Light related fractionation is reduced under conditions of high light availability/photosynthesis when...
The planning, establishment and management of National Marine Conservation Areas (NMCAs) will require a wide variety of data and information on the diversity of species, communities and ecosystems. Two major issues limit the effectiveness of collecting biodiversity data in coastal marine regions. First, marine ecosystems are highly dynamic in space...
Benthic communities were assessed and 22 environmental variables were
monitored at seven leeward localities (L1ŒL7) in the Whitsunday Islands,
Queensland, Australia. L1 was near the Proserpine and O’Connell river
mouths and L7 ~80 km north of the river mouths. Distinct physico
Œchemical and biological gradients were evident. Sparse scleractinian
co...
There have been many inspired literary works written in the past that touched upon the beauty and the intricacies of coral reefs. The diversity of types, shapes and sizes of Indonesian coral reefs, as well as the outstanding richness of the various plant and animal species that live in, on and above these unique biogenic structures, has fascinated...
Even though scleractinian corals are the primary builders of present-day coral reefs, skeletal material of other groups, both plant and animal, is incorporated into the construction of the reef matrix. In fact, incorporation, cementation and consolidation of all these calcareous materials, including the corals, is a primary requirement of reef buil...
Indonesia with a population of over 182 million people is the world's largest archipelagic state (KLH 1992). With over 17,500 islands (only 6,000 inhabited) and one of the longest coastlines in the world, Indonesia has jurisdiction over 5.8 million km2 of tropical seas within its Exclusive Economic Zone (Polunin 1983; KLH 1992; Sloan and Sugandhy 1...
Coral cays are generally referred to as low islands constructed entirely from the biogenic materials of the reef itself (Hopley 1982), and are a common physiographic and ecologic zone of many reefs throughout the archipelago (fig. 17.1) and fig. 17.2). The purely biogenic origin of coral cay sediments, from the underlying reef, and the absence of c...
Located between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and between the Asian and Australian continents, the seas of the Indonesian Archipelago have a significant role in global weather patterns and oceanic circulation. The dynamic interplay between geological, physical, chemical, and biological processes, past and present, has given rise to one of the most...
To gain an appreciation of the diverse nature of coral reef systems in the vast Indonesian archipelago, some understanding of basic coral taxonomy and biology is helpful. This is especially true for systems where one particular assemblage of organisms can be considered as the "ecological dominants". Reef-building corals (Scleractinia) are such a gr...
Located between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and between the Asian and Australian continents, the seas of the Indonesian Archipelago have a significant role in global weather patterns and oceanic circulation. The dynamic interplay between geological, physical, chemical, and biological processes, past and present, has given rise to one of the most...
The Indonesian Archipelago is one of the most complex marine domains on the planet. The complexity of the Indonesian marine environment (i.e., physical, chemical and biological) is a reflection of its geologic history and atmospheric-oceanic interactions. Indonesian seas are among the most productive in the world, and support important coastal and...
Like many other biological systems, coral reef communities are subjected to a variety of environmental disturbances of varying intensity, frequency and duration (Pearson 1981; Huston 1985; Karlson and Hurd 1993). The nature and magnitude of impacts associated with the various natural disturbances, therefore, also varies with the nature and intensit...
The Indonesian Archipelago is one of the richest marine biodiversity areas in the world. While the total biodiversity of any particular area is a function of a complex set of physical, chemical and biological interactions, as well as geological history, it will be useful here to discuss biodiversity at two levels, namely at the ecosystem level and...
This section of the book introduces the various fringing coral reefs and their distribution throughout the archipelago. For the sake of clarity we follow the classical Darwinian division as closely as possible. The reader is urged to refer to Hopley (1982) and Guilcher (1988) for an in-depth treatment of coral reef geomorphology. The above publicat...
This chapter provides an elementary overview of coral reef development and a description of the various types of major reef-building organisms responsible for building these biogenic structures during geological history. The paleoenvironmental conditions that shaped the evolution of both reef development and the reef-building organisms are discusse...
Perhaps no geologic structure made by living organisms has fascinated coral reef scientists during the past 150 years as much as have the atolls, jewels of the oceans. Atolls are widely scattered throughout the tropical and subtropical Indo-Pacific, with a few in the tropical western Atlantic. Darwin (1842) provided the first detailed account of th...
Questions
Questions (11)
I am looking for references to studies that were conducted on Pulau Kendi (5°13ʹ58.44” N, 100°10ʹ45.84” E) and Pulau Songsong (5°48ʹ42.12” N, 100°17ʹ44.88” E) in the northern Strait of Malacca, Malaysia. Specifically, I am looking for studies on their geology, as well as ecological studies of their scleractinian coral communities. I would like to find out if both islands are surrounded by well-developed fringing coral reefs.
