Alor - Sulambali Wall

Setting

The first frames are close and out of focus, then the profile resolves into a steep upper slope that rolls over into a near-vertical wall, shot repeatedly with open blue on one side (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 26).

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General benthic features

The deep and mid wall is encrusting rather than framework-building: pink and magenta crustose coralline algae, red, orange, yellow, lilac, and blue encrusting sponges, tunicates, and turf, punctuated by stacked foliose plates (e.g., Image 6, Image 9, Image 21, Image 23).

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Those plate beds are the standout habitat here - meter-scale fields of overlapping whorls compatible with Montipora, Turbinaria, Echinopora, and Pachyseris, one field carpeted in red Pseudanthias (e.g., Image 5, Image 29, Image 30).

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Large aprons of dead branching-coral rubble, bleached white and bound by coralline algae, run along the upper wall between the live stands, and pale sand chutes cut through repeatedly - live coral is genuinely discontinuous at this site (e.g., Image 27, Image 33).

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Also present: blue-gray finger and tube sponges, orange and brown barrels of Xestospongia form, tan feather-hydroid and gorgonian plumes, black and yellow feather stars, two blue Linckia laevigata, a sea cucumber, and mauve host anemones with anemonefish (e.g., Image 52).

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The shallow reef top is a different community again: green, tan, and brown tabulate Acropora tables, broad staghorn and corymbose Acropora thickets, Pocillopora, massive Porites, meandering Platygyra/Dipsastraea and Lobophyllia, Fungia, and continuous pulsing xeniid and Sarcophyton/Sinularia soft-coral meadows (e.g., Image 13, Image 18, Image 24, Image 39, Image 43).

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Coral cover

Coral cover: 22% — 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

Condition is mixed rather than uniformly good: no basin-wide bleaching, but one large massive dome is almost entirely white and several smaller colonies carry white patches, alongside the extensive older rubble (e.g., Image 17, Image 48).

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A thin white monofilament line or rope appears on the wall in at least four frames (e.g., Image 38).

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

Fish and other fauna

Fish: red anthias in thousands, dark damselfish shoals over the drop-off, yellow-and-blue fusiliers, butterflyfishes, surgeonfishes, and three tight silverside baitballs (e.g., Image 51).

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Comparisons with other data

Also on record for this site: A steep drop-off connected to a broad upper slope. Sand and rubble channels separated patchy to locally high coral cover, and the shallower frames became increasingly mixed and coral-rich.

Other notes

The last frame is topside on the liveaboard. Also on record for this site: A steep drop-off connected to a broad upper slope.