Alor - Apuri Bay

Setting

Visibility is good in most frames, with one frame showing localized turbidity/silt haze around a rock outcrop.

General benthic features

A reef with a very large massive Porites boulder colony as its centerpiece: one frame shows a diver dwarfed beside a single lobed, brain-textured Porites head at least 2-3 m across, its surface pocked with small dead/bleached-white patches and colonized at the base by encrusting purple zoanthids and a maroon foliose alga; bamboo-and-mesh cage structures (consistent with fish traps, or possibly a coral nursery/restoration frame) sit on the sand immediately behind it, strung along a guideline/rope running through the site (e.g., Image 25, Image 44).

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A second wide frame at a different point on the reef shows more of these bamboo cages beside more coral (e.g., Image 13, Image 26).

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Elsewhere the reef is a fine-grained mosaic of low mounding and plating colonies (gray-brown Porites/faviid heads, pale plating corals with white growing edges, one vivid green plating colony) interspersed with red encrusting sponge/algae, a lilac soft coral, and open rubble, transitioning in other frames to dense low staghorn-type Acropora thickets over rubble (e.g., Image 5, Image 21, Image 22, Image 28, Image 49).

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Coral cover

Coral cover: 29% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 208 of Anderson's unedited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.

Stressors

No bleaching of live tissue is visible on any coral aside from small dead/algae-covered patches on the giant Porites head, which read as old lesions or partial mortality rather than active bleaching; no other disease or fresh physical damage is visible. No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores evident.

Fish and other fauna

A school of dozens of small silvery fish is visible mid-water off the reef edge in one frame (e.g., Image 3).

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Comparisons with other data

Also on record for this site: A current-influenced slope whose coral cover ranged from exposed framework and rubble to dense mixed gardens (e.g., Image 15, Image 51, Image 52).

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Recognizable groups included branching and tabular Acropora, Pocillopora, foliose Montipora, massive Porites, Pavona/Pachyseris and Turbinaria plates, fungiids, and fleshy or brain-like merulinids, possibly including Diploastrea (e.g., Image 1, Image 29).

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Barrel sponges, gorgonians, crinoids, and leather corals completed the benthic mosaic, with anthias, chromis, butterflyfishes, and surgeonfishes above the reef (e.g., Image 11, Image 16, Image 53).

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The exceptional 17-24°C logged range is consistent with strong upwelling. No widespread bleaching apparent, though cover and condition varied markedly along the route.

Dive record

A dive computer readout is visible in one macro frame (29.1 m depth, 20 minutes into the dive, on GAS-1 nitrox), giving a reliable in situ depth reference against a backdrop of red encrusting sponge and a pale plating coral (e.g., Image 19).

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Other notes

The bamboo cages and the guideline are the clearest man-made objects in this sample.