Alor - Bama Wall

Setting

A spectacular reef top and upper wall, exceptionally dense with fish (e.g., Image 38, Image 53).

3853

A steep to near-vertical reef face with substantial relief and open-water exposure (e.g., Image 5, Image 9, Image 29).

5929

Visibility is excellent throughout with strong, even ambient light.

General benthic features

Coral growth forms are diverse: large plating/table Acropora colonies (one pair of overlapping brown plates hosting dozens of anthias), extensive fields of staghorn/digitate Acropora thickets in pale cream and pink-brown color morphs, massive and brain-type coral boulders (one meandroid brain coral with sharp ridges), and scattered purple, pink, and orange encrusting sponges alongside dark bushy black coral (e.g., Image 31, Image 44, Image 50).

314450

Plating and foliose colonies compatible with Montipora were prominent, alongside massive Porites, scattered branching or tabular Acropora, fungiids, and massive brain coral forms; live cover varied around bare framework and sediment pockets on the less vertical ledges (e.g., Image 18, Image 23, Image 41).

182341

Barrel and tube sponges, gorgonians, whip corals, and crinoids diversified the wall, with anthias, chromis, butterflyfishes, and surgeonfishes along the face (e.g., Image 4, Image 17, Image 43, Image 46).

4174346

Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 11% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 233 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

The photo review saw no bleaching or disease on the massive or plating corals reviewed, which show normal pigmentation (browns, tans, pinks); however, a computer-vision point count called 1.2% of coral points bleached (4 of 233 photos). Fishing gear: a large woven-bamboo fish trap (bubu) lay on the live reef slope among branching and plating colonies, tied to a long line running upslope (e.g., Image 54).

54

No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores were evident.

Fish and other fauna

Massive clouds of anthias (orange and purple) and smaller planktivores stream over the reef crest in nearly every wide shot, thick enough in places to obscure the substrate behind them. A banded sea krait (black-and-pale-blue bands) was seen undulating across a sandy patch strewn with coral rubble and isolated small coral clumps. A small blue Linckia sea star sits on the reef in one frame.

Comparisons with other data

We found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. Within 5 km, one independent station, WWF-US / WWF-Indonesia at station 5003, 2.55 km away, read 24% in 2014.

Regional context, not a survey of this site: Razak et al. (2026) found no significant trend in hard coral cover around Alor (a decline of 0.6% per year at 23 sites, surveyed by point-intercept transect at about 8–10 m in 2014, 2017, 2021, and 2023 by Yayasan WWF Indonesia); this is a trend for that location, not this site’s cover. Cover at those sites fell by 3% between the 2014 and 2017 surveys, which bracket 75 days of NOAA Bleaching Alert Level 1 from December 2016 to February 2017.

Other notes

Two frames show divers with camera rigs working the reef top; one wide shot looking up at the surface shows the reef silhouetted against sunlit water with a large school of dark surgeonfish/unicornfish overhead (e.g., Image 14, Image 34).

1434