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PACIFIC SCIENCE, Vol. XV, October 1961 
( 1952 ) concluded there was no evidence among 
the fish records they obtained that species had 
been brought to Hawaii in the fouling popula- 
tion on that barge. Dr. C M. Burgess, who, 
along with Campbell and Tinker, provided much 
of the specific information on these events, 
told the author that the species of the molluscan 
genus Cypraea brought in on this vessel, the 
"Yon 146,” did not become established in Ha- 
waii, and this has been affirmed by Dr. Alison 
E. Kay, who is a student of this genus. 
In commenting upon Tripterygion hemimelas 
Kner & Steindachner and Ecsenius hawaiiensis 
Chapman & Schultz, two blennioid fishes re- 
ported to have been collected from the pools 
of water in the dry dock holding the "Yon 146,” 
Strasburg (1956: 245 f.) notes that the speci- 
mens of T. hemimelas were similar to a species 
from the Samoan Islands (14° S., 171° W.) . 
The service record of this barge, as far as the 
author has been able to trace it, indicates that 
it was tied up at Apra (13° N., 145° E.), 
Guam, from 1945 to the date it was towed to 
Pearl Harbor, a period of about 4 years. Thus 
is does not seem likely that it would have been 
directly the means by which a Samoan fish would 
have been introduced into Hawaiian waters. 
Whether T. hemimelas occurs in Guam or not 
is not know# to the present author. 
Possibly the blennioid fish, Omobranchus 
elongatus ( Peters ) , was brought to Hawaii 
(Strasburg, 1956: 257) from the Samoan area 
along with chunks of reef rock bearing living 
specimens of the giant clam, Tridacna. At least 
for the present, this splendid possible avenue of 
introduction is discounted; though Acantho- 
phora has been reported (Reinbold, 1896) as 
A. orientalis from Upolu (14° S., 171° W.), 
Western Samoa. 
Individual ships have been cited previously 
as the means by which algae have been intro- 
duced into the Central Pacific. Dickie (1875^: 
33) published a note to the effect that Ulva 
latissima Linnaeus was introduced to Mangaia 
(22° S., 158° W.) in the Cook Islands when 
a whaling ship from the Antarctic was wrecked 
there on the reef in 1852. There is the pos- 
sibility, however, that the wrecked ship merely 
provided a favorable habitat, in which habitat 
an ulvoid alga interpreted by Dickie as repre- 
sentative of this specific taxon appeared. In 
form the ulvoid algae, of the larger benthic 
algae, are among the most plastic in respect 
to environmental conditions. 
Kohn (1959: 81) records Acanthophora 
(using the binomial A. orientalis) from Kaneohe 
Bay, Oahu, Hawaii, where it was the substratum 
upon which the eggs of Conus quercinus were 
found attached in February, 1956. C. quercinus 
has been recorded for Hawaii for many years 
(e.g., Bryan, 1915: 454), but the alga for only 
a few years. If C. quercinus is very host-specific 
in its egg-case depositing, this observation of 
Kohn s could be taken to imply long presence 
of Acanthophora in Hawaii. Though the alga 
is independent of the mollusc, if the mollusc is 
restricted to the algal species for egg-case de- 
position, the alga would probably have had to 
be here first and it would have taken many 
years for the mollusc to develop modified egg- 
case depositing habits including Acanthophora 
as a host. Our impression 10 is, however, that 
egg-case attachment by molluscs is not very 
specific, substratum-wise, and therefore, that 
there is no implication in Kohn’s record that 
Acanthophora grew in the islands, say, in 1915. 
After considering the types of events 
described above, we feel that it is most likely 
that A. spicifera arrived recently in Hawaii via 
the fouled bottom of a ship. Aside from the 
ordinary ship traffic, similar opportunities for 
introduction by vessels other than the "Yon 
146” are known. One of these opportunities is 
provided in the case of a similar vessel, the 
"Yogn 41,” which was towed from Subic Bay 
(15° N., 120° E.) in May, 1947. This "gas- 
oline barge (non-self-propelled)” was dry- 
docked in February, 1950, in Pearl Harbor. 
While Subic Bay is unknown phycologically, A. 
spicifera is common in the general area, e.g., in 
Manila Bay a few miles to the south it is 
abundant. However, from the timing of the 
events and from the rate of spread after the 
first specimens were found, it is believed that 
10 A letter received since from Prof. J. M. Oster- 
gaard supports this impression concerning the specific- 
ity of egg-case deposition by Conus and tells us of his 
"finds” of C. quercinus in the Honolulu Harbor area 
as dead shells in 1902 and 1905 and as living shells 
in 1915. 
