Kauai’s coral reefs remain under attack from black band disease, according to a new report that found the infection in nearly half of the corals surveyed around the island.

In a news conference at Ala Moana Beach Park on Wednesday, aquatic officials said they are continuing to monitor a disease that emerged as a serious threat just a few years ago and announced a new campaign to learn what’s causing it to proliferate.

"We still have a lot of unanswered questions," said Anne Rosinski, state marine resource specialist with the Division of Aquatic Resources.

Black band disease — a tissue-loss ailment in which the corals develop a black band — is found in tropical nearshore waters around the world. An outbreak in the Caribbean is said to have resulted in 80 percent reef loss.

The report by the University of Hawaii’s Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology represents more bad news for the state’s coral reefs, which have been plagued by outbreaks of bleaching and disease of late.

Last year, scientists recorded the worst coral bleaching on record in Hawaii, and officials said island reefs could face conditions later this year that could produce even greater damage. Two months ago, officials reported that the reefs in Kaneohe Bay were being assailed by a fast-moving coral disease called acute Montipora white syndrome.

Officials suspect that climate change and warming sea temperatures are contributing to stressing the reefs and making them more vulnerable.

According to the new UH report, black band disease was found at 23 of 47 sites surveyed on Kauai. It was predominately found on north and east shores, with hot spots near Makua and Anini beaches.

A "weak relationship" was found between the abundance of the disease and water temperature, the UH report said.

"We’ve seen that it can move rapidly across the coral colony, and it may cause mortality," said Christina Runyon, a UH doctoral student and author of the report.

The surveys are expected to continue for at least another year. In the meantime, the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center has agreed to lead a two- to three-year investigation into the relationship among black band coral disease, groundwater and other environmental drivers.

In addition, the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology continues to develop a novel putty treatment that has shown initial success in reducing the amount of coral tissue death from the disease.

But Runyon said the treatment, while promising on a small scale, is really just a bandage.

"The treatment we really need to do is clean up our watershed. That is the major treatment," she said, adding that she suspects septic tanks, cesspools, agriculture and runoff from land exacerbate the problem.

Runyon said scientists suspect the bacteria causing the disease have been in the environment for a long time and that means there is some sort of "environmental shift" that has allowed for the corals to become stressed.

"Corals are like us. We get sick," she said. "The thing that is perplexing to us is the rate we are seeing. It’s more and more."

The disease, which appears to be more active in summer, is believed to affect only three species of rice coral (Montipora): M. capitata, M. patula and M. flabellata.

Originally discovered on Kauai in low levels in 2004, the disease increased tenfold over a six-year period. Last year a multi-agency management team was assembled by the state to take a closer look at the problem, and last month a group of experts met to discuss and create a strategy to investigate environmental drivers of the disease.

The good news is that black band disease has not been discovered anywhere else in the island chain — despite a call to ocean users statewide to look out for the disease.

State officials said they view coral reefs as a foundation of the Hawaiian aquatic ecosystem. When the reefs are damaged, they say, it suggests a deterioration of the whole ecosystem.

"Coral reefs play a very important role in our oceans here in Hawaii, both ecologically and economically," Rosinski said.

Officials urged Hawaii ocean users to report new coral disease outbreaks to The Eyes of the Reef Network at eorhawaii.org.