Bonaire - Vista Blue
Part of the regional summary: Bonaire
More about this place: Bonaire on Wikipedia
More info
Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire (NOAA CRW virtual station)Vista Blue is a Bonaire reef slope with exceptionally dense stands of sea rods, sea whips, and sea plumes mixed among boulder and brain coral heads on sand and rubble. Porcupinefish and pipefish hide among the gorgonians while a hawksbill turtle, tarpon, and parrotfish pass by, and the corals show no sign of a broad bleaching event.
Vista Blue is een rifhelling op Bonaire met uitzonderlijk dichte begroeiing van zeestaven, zeezwepen en zeeveren, tussen sterkoraal- en hersenkoraalkoppen op zand en puin. Egelvissen en zeenaalden verschuilen zich tussen de gorgonen terwijl een karetschildpad, een tarpon en papegaaivissen voorbijkomen, en de koralen vertonen geen teken van een grootschalige verbleking.
AI translation of this summary; the English is authoritative.
Two 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.
7 of the 49 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
A reef slope with exceptionally dense gorgonian cover, tall stands of sea rods, sea whips, and sea plumes interspersed with boulder and brain coral heads on sand and rubble (e.g., Image 3, Image 5).
Vista Blue is a heterogeneous reef slope where octocorals are common.
General benthic features
Sea rods, whips, and fans are interspersed with massive, brain, and plating corals, tube sponges, sand channels, and older carbonate framework (e.g., Image 2).
Coral cover
- Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
- Coral cover: 11% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 60 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
The set does not show a broad bleaching event. The full-resolution brain coral view retains continuous, normally pigmented tissue around a natural central depression. Some gorgonians appear pale, but lighting, species color, and polyp state prevent a mortality diagnosis from color alone. Local old framework and small scars are present without an unmistakable acute disease front. A thin, kinked white fishing line (monofilament) is draped across a plating coral and runs up into the gorgonians: discarded fishing gear (e.g., Image 30).
No corallivores were evident.
Fish and other fauna
A porcupinefish and a pipefish tucked among the branching gorgonians, with a hawksbill turtle, a distant tarpon, and parrotfish working the coral heads (e.g., Image 12, Image 14, Image 24).
The photographs also record a snake eel and schooling grunts.
Comparisons with other data
The XL Catlin Seaview Survey covered a nearby station (transect 17040) in 2013, 0.16 km from the pin; we could not confirm that it is the same reef. Within 5 km, two XL Catlin Seaview Survey stations recorded station-year means of 12–14% hard coral cover in 2013; the nearest, XL Catlin Seaview Survey at transect 17040, 0.16 km away, read 12% 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 | 30.0 | n = 68 · SE 1.8 |
| Claude (edited photos) | 10.9 | n = 60 · SE 1.4 |
CoralSCOP (edited photos) reads 30.0%, 19.1 pp above Claude's blind point count (10.9%); the headline stays 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, 2 independent survey stations 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 (11%) sits 1 point below the one survey station up to 2 km away (12%), inside the 7-point method-noise floor (inconclusive); 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | transect 17040 | 2013 | 12% | 0.16 km | doi:10.14264/uql.2019.930 |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | transect 17041 | 2013 | 14% | 3.28 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.