Coral Reef Diagnostics

Bonaire - La Dania's Leap

Reef Check Foundation
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Part of the regional summary: Bonaire

More about this place: Bonaire on Wikipedia

05
Coral Health Index: TBD
Photo: Anderson Mayfield/Coral Reef Diagnostics
Country
Bonaire
Survey date(s)
2017-02-22
Coordinates
12.2182, -68.3482
Position from GPS-tagged photographs from this dive.
Coral cover
25%
Claude computer vision (56 edited photos) · other methods below · median 18%
Observations
dead coral
Heat stress
Most recent heat load record
28.8°C2.1°C-weeks
26 Oct 2026 · Bleaching Warning
5-year thermal stress load
5-year mean max. degree heating weeks (DHW)
17.3°C-weeksi
2021–2025
NOAA Coral Reef Watch — Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire virtual station
i 5-year mean max. DHW is the mean of the annual maximum DHWs over the five complete years named above, not conditions today.
More infoAruba, Curacao, and Bonaire (NOAA CRW virtual station)
Photographs
67
48 shown on this page
Site summary
Read this summary in:

La Dania's Leap is a giant-stride shore entry off a limestone ledge straight onto a steep Bonaire wall, with elkhorn coral crowning the shallows and a face packed with plate, brain, and boulder corals, plus orange tube sponges. Schools of reef fish stream along the drop-off; a few brain corals carry large patches of old dead tissue, but most of the reef looks coral-dense.

Max. depth dived
39.6 m
Water temp. during survey
26.4°C
-1.5°C vs the 2017 mean sea temperature (27.9°C)
Bottom time
47 min
in at 15:28

Eleven independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.

Three other CRD dive sites with their own pages within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.

5 of the 48 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.

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Photo credit & attribution

Site description

Setting

A dramatic shore dive entered by a giant stride off a low limestone ledge into deep water, dropping straight into a steep wall (e.g., Image 2).

2Image 2

General benthic features

Elkhorn coral crowns the shallows above a wall face packed with large brain and boulder corals and clusters of orange tube sponge, with schools of small reef fish streaming along the drop-off (e.g., Image 1, Image 4).

1Image 14Image 4

La Dania's Leap combines a steep, plate-coral-dense wall with shallower fields of massive and lobate star-coral forms (e.g., Image 3, Image 5).

3Image 35Image 5

Sea rods, whips, and sponges contribute additional structure, and living Acropora palmata is documented near the top of the sequence (e.g., Image 1).

Coral cover

Stressors

No widespread bleaching pattern is visible. Most wall plates and shallow massive colonies remain pigmented. One frame shows large, clearly old partial-mortality patches on brain corals; the exposed areas are encrusted and do not present as a fresh white disease band. Colony-level damage is therefore present even though the wider reef appears coral-dense. No corallivores were evident.

Fish and other fauna

Dense reef-fish aggregations, parrotfish, and cleaner shrimp are also represented.

Comparisons with other data

Coral cover — external cross-reference (Reef Check). Two independent measurements, reported side by side and deliberately not averaged. Anderson Mayfield / CRD: 25% hard coral (2017). Reef Check: 28% at Karpata Reserve, 1.24 km away, in 2003 (yearly means 24–34% across 8 surveys at 3 and 10 m, 2000–2003). The two are 14 years apart (CRD later). Methods differ (CRD photographic/point-count index vs Reef Check point-intercept transect). Reef Check site positions are approximate; at 1.24 km apart the two surveys may have sampled different patches of the same reef, which is the main caveat on this comparison.

CV model comparison

Mean 25%, median 18% across 56 photos.
More infoA 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.
Headline: Claude computer vision, a blind point count of this site's own photographs.
More infoOther rows are for comparison only and are never averaged. No diver transect exists for these photos, so agreement between rows is not accuracy.
MethodHard coral cover (%)Photos (n) ± SE
CoralSCOP edited27.4n = 67 · SE 2.2
Claude (edited photos)24.5n = 56 · SE 2.7

CoralSCOP (edited photos) reads 27.4%, within 2.9 pp of Claude's blind point count (24.5%).

See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.

Independent surveys nearby

Data availability near this site
Agency / programYear(s)Stations / distanceLink
Kramer & Bischof 200319991 station, 0.50 kmRecords ↓
Reef Check2000–20031 station, 1.24 kmRecords ↓
Steneck et al. (2019)2004–20172 stations, 0.28–2.38 kmRecords ↓
Stokes et al. 201020083 stations, 0.50 kmRecords ↓
XL Catlin Seaview Survey20134 stations, 0.43–4.72 kmRecords ↓
Hard coral cover over time — this site and every independent station within 5 km. Programs are shown separately because they use different methods at different stations; the lines are not one comparable series.
0%15%30%45%60%199920082017Kramer & Bischof 2003 1999: 44%Reef Check 2000: 34%Reef Check 2001: 24%Reef Check 2002: 26%Reef Check 2003: 28%Steneck et al. (2019) 2004: 46%Steneck et al. (2019) 2005: 47%Steneck et al. (2019) 2007: 44%Steneck et al. (2019) 2011: 39%Steneck et al. (2019) 2013: 40%Steneck et al. (2019) 2013: 45%Steneck et al. (2019) 2015: 47%Steneck et al. (2019) 2015: 50%Steneck et al. (2019) 2017: 54%Steneck et al. (2019) 2017: 60%Stokes et al. 2010 2008: 31%Stokes et al. 2010 2008: 36%Stokes et al. 2010 2008: 42%XL Catlin Seaview Survey 2013: 20%XL Catlin Seaview Survey 2013: 20%XL Catlin Seaview Survey 2013: 25%XL Catlin Seaview Survey 2013: 26%Coral Reef Diagnostics 2017: 25%Year-averaged across all programs: illustrative only; the programs differ in stations and method, so no trend is claimed (13 years)
Kramer & Bischof 2003 Reef Check Steneck et al. (2019) Stokes et al. 2010 XL Catlin Seaview Survey Coral Reef DiagnosticsYear-average (illustrative only, programs differ)

Within 5 km, 11 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 60 records between 1999 and 2017. Of the 3 stations surveyed in more than one year, 1 declined (by 6.0 points) and 2 increased (by 9.0–14 points) between their first and latest surveys. The longest record, Karpata (Steneck et al. 2019, 0.28 km away), went from 46% in 2004 (mean of 8 records) to 60% in 2017 (mean of 4 records). The most recent nearby survey is from 2017, so these values predate recent heat stress. This site's own estimate (25%) sits within the range of these station-year means up to 2 km away (24–60%); the methods differ, so the comparison is context, not a like-for-like test.

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.

Show all 60 independent survey records
Independent survey data near this site
AgencySite / locationDateHard coral cover (%)DistanceLink
Kramer & Bischof 2003Karpata [10 m]199944%0.50 km—
Reef CheckKarpata Reserve2000–200324–34% (range of yearly means; 8 surveys)1.24 km—
Steneck et al. (2019)Karpata2004–201739–60% (range of yearly means; 32 records)0.28 kmdoi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00265
Stokes et al. 2010Karpata (Bonaire Marine Park mooring) [2008 - 5 m]200836%0.50 kmdoi:10.5479/si.00775630.582.1
Stokes et al. 2010Karpata (Bonaire Marine Park mooring) [2008 - 10 m]200842%0.50 kmdoi:10.5479/si.00775630.582.1
Stokes et al. 2010Karpata (Bonaire Marine Park mooring) [2008 - 15 m]200831%0.50 kmdoi:10.5479/si.00775630.582.1
XL Catlin Seaview Surveytransect 17039201325%0.43 kmdoi:10.14264/uql.2019.930
Steneck et al. (2019)No-Dive Reserve2013–201745–54% (range of yearly means; 12 records)2.38 kmdoi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00265
XL Catlin Seaview Surveytransect 17038201320%2.76 kmdoi:10.14264/uql.2019.930
XL Catlin Seaview Surveytransect 17037201320%4.59 kmdoi:10.14264/uql.2019.930
XL Catlin Seaview Surveytransect 17046201326%4.72 kmdoi: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.

References

  1. Kramer P, Bischof BG (2003). AGRRA Data. Assessment Tables for Abaco, Bahamas (Fishes), Lighthouse Belize(Corals, Algae, Fishes) and Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles (Corals, Algae, Fishes). Atoll Research Bulletin 496:590-597. DOI
  2. Steneck RS, Arnold SN, Boenish R, de León R, Mumby PJ, Rasher DB, et al. (2019). Managing Recovery Resilience in Coral Reefs Against Climate-Induced Bleaching and Hurricanes: A 15 Year Case Study From Bonaire, Dutch Caribbean. Frontiers in Marine Science 6:265. PDF
  3. Stokes MD, Leichter JJ, Genovese SJ (2010). Long-term declines in coral cover at Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles. Atoll Research Bulletin 582:1-21. DOI
  4. Gonzalez-Rivero M, et al. (2019). Seaview Survey photo-quadrat and image classification dataset. The University of Queensland (UQ eSpace) data collection. DOI