Alor - Bakalang Jetty

Setting

A muck/jetty site over dark volcanic sand and rubble with old wooden pilings, matching the existing site name and dive_type (e.g., Image 3, Image 15).

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Apparent depth is moderate based on residual color and strobe use throughout.

General benthic features

Two frames show the pilings themselves, encrusted top to bottom in orange, red, and cream tube/encrusting sponges, with a black bushy growth (consistent with black coral, Antipatharia), a translucent lavender ball-cluster of eggs or a colonial ascidian, a delicate white gorgonian sea fan hanging below one crossbeam, and a diver with a slate/pointer working the structure; visibility in these frames is workable but hazy/particulate, typical of a silty muck site (e.g., Image 21, Image 27, Image 46, Image 48).

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On the sand/rubble bottom between pilings, branching thickets (cf. Acropora) host small blue-and-yellow damselfish, alongside a dense low mound of finger-like beige coral with purple-tipped branches (possibly a diseased or naturally pale Acropora/Seriatopora colony) and a separate low staghorn-type cluster (e.g., Image 13, Image 54).

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A large soft, leathery anemone with short beige tentacles hosts a pair of small clownfish/anemonefish-type fish.

Coral cover

Coral cover: 7.6% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 51 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 overt disease, bleaching, or physical damage is visible on any coral colony in this sample; the pale finger-coral cluster is worth a second look (see flags).

Fish and other fauna

Close macro frames show: a spectacular Chromodoris-type nudibranch (black body, orange-rimmed white-and-black banded mantle, orange gill plume) on pink encrusting sponge/coralline rock; a burrowing/feather-duster-type tube anemone with pale tentacles fringed in maroon dots around a dark mouth; a colorful anemone shrimp (red-and-white banded) clinging to a burrowing cerianthid's tube alongside pale green branching coral tips; a dark, elongated sea cucumber lying across rubble next to a small green dive-slip tag on the sand (man-made, likely a site/frame label, not litter); and two macro shots of massive faviid/brain-type coral surface detail, one closeup with a distinct grass-green polyp coloration and the other pale cream-green with visible septal ridges, neither showing bleached white tissue or lesions (e.g., Image 2, Image 20, Image 38).

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Comparisons with other data

Also on record for this site: Scattered hard corals included branching Acropora, massive Porites, fungiids, merulinid brain corals, and large-polyp forms compatible with Euphyllia/Physogyra (e.g., Image 39, Image 50, Image 53).

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The pilings were heavily colonized by orange, red, and blue sponges, hydroids, crinoids, and soft corals, creating vertical habitat above sand and rubble (e.g., Image 23).

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Macro subjects included conspicuous chromodorid and phyllidiid nudibranchs, among them a Phyllidia varicosa-type form, plus anemones and small cryptic fishes (e.g., Image 17, Image 33, Image 35).

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