Bonaire - Oil Slick Leap
Part of the regional summary: Bonaire
More about this place: Bonaire on Wikipedia
More info
Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire (NOAA CRW virtual station)A Bonaire shore entry over shallow algal pavement to a steep wall carpeted in boulder star coral mounds and dense overlapping lettuce-coral plates, with sea plumes along the crest and broken elkhorn fragments in the shallows. French angelfish, parrotfish, goatfish, and grunts work the reef, and no broad bleaching is visible.
Een kantinstap op Bonaire over ondiepe, met algen begroeide rotsbodem naar een steile wand die bedekt is met bulten sterkoraal en dichte, overlappende platen slakoraal, met zeeveren langs de rand en afgebroken stukken elandsgeweikoraal in het ondiepe water. Franse keizersvissen, papegaaivissen, zeebarbelen en grombaarzen zoeken het rif af, en er is geen grootschalige verbleking te zien.
AI translation of this summary; the English is authoritative.
Eight 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 32 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
A shore entry over shallow algal pavement leading to a steep wall dropping into blue water, its face carpeted in boulder star coral (Orbicella) mounds and lettuce coral plates with sea plume gorgonians along the crest (e.g., Image 2, Image 13, Image 14).
The contrast between deep wall and shallow low-relief habitat is strong.
General benthic features
Broken elkhorn coral fragments and a dense staghorn-like colony dot the shallows, with schools of yellow goatfish and grunts working the reef. Oil Slick Leap is characterized by a steep wall carrying dense overlapping plate or lettuce corals, while shallower views contain massive and lobate colonies, octocorals, scattered Acropora-type structure, and open algal-covered pavement (e.g., Image 2, Image 4).
Coral cover
- Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
- Coral cover: 26% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 29 of Anderson's edited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.
Stressors
No bleaching is visible in any of the 32 frames, and no disease band shows in any of them. Dense plating assemblages retain pigment, while some massive colonies and framework show localized old scars or encrusted surfaces. A close frame of a lobate star-coral colony shows a broadly pigmented surface without an obvious fresh white lesion margin. Open shallow pavement should not be interpreted as recent coral mortality without time-series evidence. No corallivores were evident.
Fish and other fauna
French angelfish, parrotfish, and schooling reef fishes occur throughout the set (e.g., Image 3).
Comparisons with other data
XL Catlin Seaview Survey surveyed a nearby station (transect 17037) in 2013, 0.17 km from the pin. Within 5 km, eight independent stations recorded station-year means of 20–49% hard coral cover between 1982 and 2017; the nearest, XL Catlin Seaview Survey at transect 17037, 0.17 km away, read 20% 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
Other rows are for comparison only and are never averaged. No diver transect exists for these photos, so agreement between rows is not accuracy.| Method | Hard coral cover (%) | Photos (n) ± SE |
|---|---|---|
| CoralSCOP edited | 28.3 | n = 33 · SE 3.5 |
| Claude (edited photos) | 26.0 | n = 29 · SE 3.8 |
CoralSCOP (edited photos) reads 28.3%, within 2.3 pp of Claude's blind point count (26.0%).
See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.
Independent surveys nearby
| Agency / program | Year(s) | Stations / distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Handschuh (pers. comm.) 1997, via Stokes et al. 2010 | 1997 | 1 station, 3.46 km | Records ↓ |
| Kobluk & Lysenko 1984 | 1982 | 1 station, 3.46 km | Records ↓ |
| Steneck et al. (2019) | 2004–2017 | 3 stations, 1.45–3.90 km | Records ↓ |
| Stokes et al. 2010 | 2008 | 2 stations, 3.46 km | Records ↓ |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | 2013 | 1 station, 0.17 km | Records ↓ |
Coral Reef DiagnosticsYear-average (illustrative only, programs differ)Within 5 km, 8 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 100 records between 1982 and 2017. Of the 3 stations surveyed in more than one year, 1 declined (by 8.0 points), 1 increased (by 10 points), and 1 changed by less than 1 point between their first and latest surveys. Two stations share the longest span (2004–2017); one, Barcadera (Steneck et al. 2019, 1.45 km away), went from 46% in 2004 (mean of 8 records) to 38% 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 (26%) sits within the range of these station-year means up to 2 km away (20–49%); the methods differ, so the comparison is context, not a like-for-like test.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kobluk & Lysenko 1984 | Cliff (Aquahabitat photomosaic station) [19 m] | 1982 | 40% | 3.46 km | — |
| Handschuh (pers. comm.) 1997, via Stokes et al. 2010 | Cliff [7.6 m] | 1997 | 32% | 3.46 km | — |
| Steneck et al. (2019) | Barcadera | 2004–2017 | 30–49% (range of yearly means; 40 records) | 1.45 km | doi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00265 |
| Steneck et al. (2019) | Reef Scientifico | 2004–2017 | 36–49% (range of yearly means; 35 records) | 3.90 km | doi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00265 |
| Stokes et al. 2010 | Cliff [2008 - 10 m] | 2008 | 27% | 3.46 km | doi:10.5479/si.00775630.582.1 |
| Stokes et al. 2010 | Cliff [2008 - 20 m] | 2008 | 36% | 3.46 km | doi:10.5479/si.00775630.582.1 |
| Steneck et al. (2019) | Oilslick leap | 2009–2017 | 30–47% (range of yearly means; 20 records) | 1.45 km | doi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00265 |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | transect 17037 | 2013 | 20% | 0.17 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.
References
- Kobluk DR, Lysenko MA (1984). Carbonate rocks and coral reefs, Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles. Geological Association of Canada, Field Trip 13 guidebook, Toronto. 67 pp.
- Stokes MD, Leichter JJ, Genovese SJ (2010). Long-term declines in coral cover at Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles. Atoll Research Bulletin 582:1-21. DOI
- 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
- Gonzalez-Rivero M, et al. (2019). Seaview Survey photo-quadrat and image classification dataset. The University of Queensland (UQ eSpace) data collection. DOI