Dongsha Atoll - Site 7 (branching)

General benthic features

Site 7 is not a uniform, low-relief rubble flat; it is a mosaic. Some wide frames do show exactly that degraded surface: low consolidated rubble and cemented pavement crusted with turf, pink and red coralline algae, and orange and maroon encrusting growth, carrying only small, widely separated colonies (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, Image 7, Image 12, Image 43), and one frame is an unbroken carpet of loose, algae-dusted branch fragments running to the limit of visibility (e.g., Image 37).

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But other wide frames from the same dive show substantial living reef. One is a densely packed assemblage of foliose plates, mauve encrusting sheets, massive heads, and a standing bushy branching colony with almost no open substrate in it (e.g., Image 5).

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Another is an olive-green digitate and branching stand set among massive Porites-type domes and foliose plates (e.g., Image 6).

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A third is a dense yellow-green digitate coral bank with humbug damselfish hanging over it (e.g., Image 13).

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Overall the station is patches of living framework separated by broad, older dead pavement, not a station-wide flat.

Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 30% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 16 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's sample sheet describes seven of the eight Pocillopora colonies sampled here as healthy (one with old mortality) and one small colony in a low-cover area as lightly pigmented (e.g., Image 9, Image 10, Image 11, Image 14, Image 15, Image 16, Image 17, Image 18, Image 19, Image 20).

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No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores were evident.

Comparisons with other data

We found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. If you would like to share yours, please email us.

Dive record

Site 7 was dived on the afternoon of 5 April 2016: in at 12:54 for 44 minutes, to a maximum depth of 8.1 m, in 21-22°C water with about 3 m of visibility (Anderson's sample sheet, which notes 'very bad visibility'); the eight colonies were sampled at 1.6-3.6 m between 13:02 and 13:38. Anderson's photographs span 12:59-13:37, about two hours after the Site 6 morning dive ended and in the same camera file sequence.

Other notes

Roughly two thirds of the photo set — about 32 of the 47 frames — is high-magnification, strobe-lit macro of individual small branching colonies, the colonies this atoll was visited to sample (e.g., Image 21, Image 22, Image 24, Image 25, Image 27).

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Two frames catch the sampling itself: a pair of open stainless bone-cutting forceps lying on the pavement, once beside a live colony and once on bare crust (e.g., Image 4, Image 8).

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