Alor - Monaseli (Munaseli)

Setting

Monaseli (Munaseli), northern Pantar — two dives on the same day, and the photographs show two genuinely different habitats, which is why they are described apart. Dive 1 (54 frames) opens on the vertical face. Above about the mid-point the wall rolls over into a broad deep terrace, and the character changes completely.

General benthic features

The first twenty frames are wall: near-black rock in ambient blue, hung with a large pale elephant-ear sponge, deep-red and pink barrel sponges (Xestospongia form) sitting on ledges, gray-green tube and vase sponges, yellow and white gorgonian fans, bushy black-coral colonies, and mauve, white, and cream soft corals of Dendronephthya form. Crinoids in yellow, green and black perch on every projection. Hard coral on the face itself is mostly encrusting and thin-plating — laminar plates with pale growing margins compatible with Montipora, Echinopora and Pachyseris — and a green foliose colony with a bright white edge recurs. Here the ground is pink crustose coralline pavement, white carbonate sand and dead branching framework, with live coral in discrete patches: fields of gray and cream tabulate Acropora tables stacked shingle-fashion, one large yellow-green tabular plate, a salmon-pink table, corymbose thickets, and isolated bommies carrying stacked tables above massive bases. Dive 2 (126 frames) covers lower-relief terraces, isolated bommies and white sand channels, and carries visibly more living coral. Tabulate and corymbose Acropora are the dominant architecture — pale gray tables, a salmon-pink table with a white growing rim, mauve and purple corymbose colonies — with large arborescent staghorn stands, deep-red branching thickets, golden-brown bushy colonies, thick-fingered digitate Porites, and gray lobed leather corals of Sarcophyton/Sinularia form. A domed meandroid massive coral photographed close-up sits in a mosaic of red encrusting sponge, purple soft coral and an urchin. Sponges are again conspicuous: paired red barrel sponges with scarlet interiors, orange tube-sponge clusters, a broad gray sea fan, and pale blue-gray ropy sponges. Between the coral patches, however, are broad expanses of pink coralline pavement, dead branching rubble and open sand — the site is patchy, not a continuous carpet.

Coral cover

Coral cover: 20% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 178 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

Several frames are largely pavement and rubble with only scattered colonies, and two show a stark white tabular colony that reads as recently dead or bleached rather than as living tissue. No crown-of-thorns and no clear disease lesions were seen in the 120 frames; a small number of white colonies are the only bleaching-like signal.

Fish and other fauna

The water column carries constant fish: clouds of anthias and chromis, yellow pyramid- and other butterflyfishes streaming along the face, fusiliers further out, and divers silhouetted against the surface with reels and camera rigs. Fauna in frame includes a giant clam (Tridacna sp.) with a blue-gray mantle, a parrotfish, a Moorish idol, damselfishes and anthias over the coral, blue damselfishes over the sand, and abundant crinoids.

Comparisons with other data

No prior survey data from this site. If you would like to share yours, please email us.

Other notes

Man-made objects are divers, tanks, reels, and cameras, plus the photographer's own fin edge in two frames.