Critically Endangered
Thick finger coral
Porites duerdeni
Thick finger coral is a coral in the family Poritidae, representing stoney corals, and is endemic to Hawai'i.
Appearance
Thick finger coral is a colonial coral and is typically light brown, cream, yellowish, or light green in color with short knub/spherical like branches.
Range and habitat
Thick finger coral is an extremely rare species of colonial reef building finger coral found almost exclusively in Kāne‘ohe Bay, O’ahu. It can be most abundantly found in shallow waters typically ranging from depths of 3–6 ft but can also be found at greater depths that still receive significant sunlight. Thick finger coral, also called thick or knobby finger coral, is a coral in the family Poritidae, representing stoney corals, and is endemic to Hawai'i.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
A stony-coral colony is fixed. Growth, bleaching, and death happen in place. Collection and gear damage remove the skeleton as well as the tissue.
The colony stays where it settled. Water quality, light, and a stable bottom decide whether tissue remains on the skeleton.
In crisis
Thick finger coral faced severe impacts due to bleaching events in 2015 and 2016, however a small team from the DLNR Division of Aquatic Resources has been working to curb extinction by planting nursery grown P. Duerdeni on the reefs of Kāne‘ohe Bay, O’ahu.
Warm-water bleaching, sedimentation, destructive fishing, and the curio trade sit behind many stony-coral badges. That is the group backdrop — confirm the official criteria for this name on the Red List.
Thick finger coral is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Thick finger coral, Wikidata item Q14158920. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
