Anguilla - Deep South
Part of the regional summary: Anguilla
More about this place: Anguilla on Wikipedia
More info
Leeward Caribbean Islands (NOAA CRW virtual station)A quiet, low-relief hardbottom reef of scattered boulder and brain coral heads over red coralline algae, with an invasive lionfish tucked near the sponges. A blind Claude computer-vision point count puts coral cover around 6.6%.
One independent survey station shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
One other CRD dive site with its own page within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.
These are unedited originals; edited versions will replace them.
16 of the 48 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
Deep South is a low-relief hardbottom reef of scattered coral heads and rocky ridges dropping into sandy grooves, carpeted in vivid red encrusting coralline algae (e.g., Image 7, Image 20, Image 29, Image 55).
Sand lies at about 22 m and the reef tops out at about 15 m (Anderson's dive log).
General benthic features
Anderson logged mountainous star coral (Orbicella faveolata) as the most common coral, followed by mustard hill coral (Porites astreoides): boulder colonies dome up alongside a corrugated brain coral, while clusters of mustard hill coral hug the rock (e.g., Image 2, Image 15, Image 16, Image 25, Image 48).
Erect brown tube sponges and wiry black sea rods add vertical texture (e.g., Image 18, Image 31), and banded spiny lobsters share the ledges (e.g., Image 54).
Coral cover
- Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
- Coral cover: 6.6% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 63 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
Anderson logged most of the reef as smothered by algae, a pretty beat-up site, though several lobsters turned up. In the photographs this shows as algal overgrowth of coral rock and colony margins: leafy algal plates (consistent with Lobophora) press directly against live coral in several frames. Many branch tips on the finger-coral clumps are dead and overgrown by pink crustose coralline algae, older partial mortality (e.g., Image 3, Image 15).
No corallivores were evident.
Fish and other fauna
A camouflaged lionfish — an unwelcome Indo-Pacific invader now well established through the Caribbean — rests near the sponges, while a lone barracuda hangs in open water and a spotted reef fish glides past (e.g., Image 1, Image 21, Image 44).
Comparisons with other data
We found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. Within 5 km, one independent station, XL Catlin Seaview Survey at transect 25024, 3.74 km away, read 2.7% in 2013.
CV model comparison
More info
A few colony-focused photos raise the mean; the median is the typical photo. No computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images, so treat this as indicative rather than a measurement; it is revised as the methods improve.More info
DINOv3 and CoralSCOP were run on the same photos and are listed for comparison. No diver transect exists for this trip, so agreement between the rows is not accuracy, and no computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images; treat every row as indicative.| Method | Hard coral cover (%) | Photos (n) ± SE |
|---|---|---|
| In-house DINOv3 | 13.3 | n = 63 · SE 0.8 |
| CoralSCOP unedited | 20.4 | n = 63 · SE 1.7 |
| Claude | 6.6 | n = 63 · SE 1.1 |
The two computer-vision methods differ by 7.1 pp (13.3–20.4%) and read 6.7–13.8 pp above Claude's blind point count (6.6%); the headline is Claude's blind point count because no transect or manual count exists here.
See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.
Independent surveys nearby
Within 5 km, 1 independent survey station recorded hard coral cover in 2013. The most recent nearby survey is from 2013, so these values predate recent heat stress. This site's own estimate (6.6%) is not compared with these surveys: none lies within 2 km.
Collected by other programs using different methods (the XL Catlin Seaview Survey uses photo-transects with automated image annotation), so these are context for the figures above, not a like-for-like comparison. Where a station was surveyed more than once, the cell shows either the range of its values or, as a single value, the mean of surveys made in one year. Station names are not dive-site names.
| Agency | Site / location | Date | Hard coral cover (%) | Distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | transect 25024 | 2013 | 2.7% | 3.74 km | doi:10.14264/uql.2019.930 |
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data are from Coral Reef Diagnostics and the organizations named in the data sources above.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.