Anguilla - The Pipe
Part of the regional summary: Anguilla
More about this place: Anguilla on Wikipedia
More info
Leeward Caribbean Islands (NOAA CRW virtual station)The Pipe is a colonized concrete conduit turned reef, its length studded with boulder and brain corals, encrusting and tube sponges, a giant anemone, and a grazing queen conch. A blind Claude computer-vision point count puts coral cover around 6.6%.
Two independent survey stations 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.
This page shows 50 of the 84 photographs from this site, including every one the text cites.
19 of the 50 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
The Pipe is the desalination plant's effluent pipe, lying in a seagrass meadow interspersed with sand, now thoroughly colonized and functioning as an unlikely reef (e.g., Image 15, Image 53).
Anderson logged a staggering amount of life given how narrow the pipe is: two octopus, five turtles, four or five slipper lobsters, and lots of fire coral and mustard hill coral (Porites astreoides).
General benthic features
Boulder and brain corals cluster along its length and at its junction boxes, joined by red encrusting sponges and a cluster of white tube sponges (e.g., Image 4, Image 5, Image 9, Image 16, Image 26, Image 3, Image 31, Image 46, Image 50).
Coral cover
- Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
- Coral cover: 6.6% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 65 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
One lobed massive colony on the pipe carries several stark-white patches on its upper lobes: partial bleaching or recent tissue loss, cause unclear (e.g., Image 54).
No corallivores were evident.
Fish and other fauna
A giant anemone trails slender tentacles from one crevice, and a queen conch grazes the sand nearby (e.g., Image 19, Image 30, Image 38).
Watch for a black-spotted porcupinefish hovering just off the pipe, a cushion sea star parked on open sand, and blue tangs schooling around the structure (e.g., Image 1, Image 8, Image 35, Image 40).
Comparisons with other data
We found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. Within 5 km, two independent stations (Reef Check and XL Catlin Seaview Survey) recorded station-year means of 1.3–15% hard coral cover between 2002 and 2013; the nearest, Reef Check at Blackgarden, 3.42 km away, read 15% in 2002.
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 | 19.4 | n = 65 · SE 1.1 |
| CoralSCOP unedited | 19.1 | n = 65 · SE 1.8 |
| Claude | 6.6 | n = 65 · SE 1.1 |
The two computer-vision methods agree within 0.3 pp (19.1–19.4%) and read 12.5–12.8 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
| Agency / program | Year(s) | Stations / distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reef Check | 2002 | 1 station, 3.42 km | Records ↓ |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | 2013 | 1 station, 4.53 km | Records ↓ |
Coral Reef DiagnosticsYear-average (illustrative only, programs differ)Within 5 km, 2 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 2 surveys between 2002 and 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 (Reef Check uses point-intercept transects; 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reef Check | Blackgarden | 2002 | 15% | 3.42 km | — |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | transect 25019 | 2013 | 1.3% | 4.53 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.