Alor - Harilolong (School's Out)

Setting

An exposed, current-swept slope whose upper edge falls away into open blue - the frames repeatedly look off the lip into dark water, and dense open-water shoals of fusilier- and surgeonfish-shaped planktivores hang there, which fits the site's nickname (e.g., Image 38, Image 52).

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General benthic features

The dominant substrate is a low-relief pavement almost completely veneered in brilliant magenta and red crustose coralline algae, with the coral community growing as encrusting and plating sheets on top: lavender and olive Montipora plates, green and gray Turbinaria, Pachyseris, Echinopora, and large concentric plating colonies with pale growing margins (e.g., Image 8, Image 22, Image 25, Image 28).

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Interspersed are meter-plus tabulate Acropora tables with white or electric-blue growth edges, dense mounds of blue-lavender digitate Acropora, Pocillopora, and Stylophora, cream Porites cylindrica-type fingers, hemispherical Porites domes, brown and vivid green Lobophyllia/Symphyllia, Platygyra, a well-photographed Merulina ampliata, and Fungia (e.g., Image 15, Image 20, Image 24, Image 27, Image 29).

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Cryptic-community close-ups show purple didemnid tunicates, green Halimeda, and red, orange, and blue encrusting sponges. Sponge fauna includes red, pink, and brown barrels, yellow tube clusters, and one macro frame of a small commensal shrimp inside a pink barrel (e.g., Image 43).

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Sand-floored pockets carry fields of pink-brown Dendronephthya-type soft coral, Sinularia, and Sarcophyton, and isolated bommies stand on white sand (e.g., Image 14, Image 34).

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The final third is the standout: near-continuous staghorn and corymbose Acropora thicket over the whole reef top, tens of meters across, with clouds of dark planktivores above (e.g., Image 4, Image 10, Image 19, Image 45).

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Coral cover

Coral cover: 36% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 275 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

Condition is good - no widespread bleaching, only small patches of exposed skeleton on a few plate colonies and normal grazing scars. No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores evident.

Fish and other fauna

Feather stars (black, yellow, cream), gorgonians, hydroid plumes, and a blue Linckia laevigata recur (e.g., Image 9, Image 26).

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A banded sea krait (Laticauda-type) crosses an encrusting colony in one frame - the only reptile in the set. Fish include anthias in the thousands, Heniochus bannerfish pairs, butterflyfishes, damselfishes, and blue-green chromis.

Comparisons with other data

Also on record for this site: A long exposed slope with open-water access and highly variable benthic cover (e.g., Image 16, Image 51).

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Anthias, chromis, and fusilier-like planktivores formed numerous small-to-moderate schools, with surgeonfishes, butterflyfishes, and parrotfishes also present; the very large pelagic aggregations the site is known for were not consistently captured (e.g., Image 31).

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