Anguilla - Catheley H

Setting

Catheley H is one of Anguilla's more curious dives — a patchwork of natural rock and rubble seafloor threaded with derelict fish traps, stacked concrete rings, and a pair of upright pilings that has slowly become its own small reef (e.g., Image 3, Image 15, Image 41, Image 48).

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It is equal parts reef and reclaimed junkyard, a reminder of how quickly the Caribbean seafloor puts anything — concrete, wire, or coral rubble — to work (e.g., Image 11, Image 38, Image 39).

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General benthic features

Chunky brain corals and boulder corals, likely Montastraea, Orbicella, and Pseudodiploria, crowd both the rock and the human-made structure, while a lionfish lurks at the base of one piling and a ray glides past early in the dive (e.g., Image 10, Image 28, Image 36, Image 46, Image 52).

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Coral cover

Coral cover: 6.2% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 108 of Anderson's unedited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table. Wreck and artificial-structure site: this cover value counts coral growing on man-made structure (steel, concrete, wreck debris) and the bottom around it, so it isn't comparable with natural-reef cover or with regional averages.

Fish and other fauna

Peer into one of the rocky swim-throughs and a nurse shark may be tucked inside, with a pair of spiny lobsters sheltering beneath an overhang nearby.

Comparisons with other data

No independent survey was made at this exact site; the nearest ones are listed in the table below.