Egypt Red Sea - Habili El Ghadeer (Marsa Nakari)
Part of the regional summaries: Egypt and Red Sea
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Egypt (NOAA CRW virtual station)Habili El Ghadeer is a submerged pinnacle whose upper plateau is dominated by bioeroded rock and coralline algae rather than living coral, with a published cover of 13%. What coral is there was hit hard: a large table Acropora more than a meter across was photographed bleached uniformly white from center to every branch tip, consistent with the site's 57% tissue-bleaching figure.
حبيلي الغدير قمة مغمورة تهيمن على هضبتها العليا الصخور المتآكلة حيويًا والطحالب المرجانية بدلًا من المرجان الحي، بتغطية منشورة تبلغ 13%. أما المرجان الموجود فقد تضرر بشدة: صُوّرت مستعمرة Acropora طاولية كبيرة يزيد عرضها على متر مبيضّة بلون أبيض موحد من مركزها حتى أطراف كل فروعها، بما يتسق مع رقم ابيضاض النسيج في الموقع البالغ 57%.
ترجمة هذا الملخص بالذكاء الاصطناعي؛ النص الإنجليزي هو المعتمد.
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Note: NOAA's regional station series averages 1.5°C warmer than the satellite pixel nearest this site (1.3 km away), which is used here instead.4 of the 20 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
An offshore habili — a submerged pinnacle that does not break the surface — dived on the morning of 21 September 2024 with Red Sea Diving Safari. The structure is a steep-sided tower rising from deeper water, its flanks dropping away into blue on every side (e.g., Image 1).
General benthic features
The upper surface is a dark, rugged, heavily bioeroded plateau — largely maroon and purple encrusting coralline algae, turf, and old framework, with coral occupying a minority of the surface. What coral there is sits in tight clusters: cauliflower and knobby pocilloporids, small corymbose Acropora, foliose and encrusting plates in olive and mustard, and a few large table Acropora cantilevered off the rim into open water (e.g., Image 2, Image 3).
Coral cover
- Reference: Mayfield (2025)
- Data file: (Mayfield, 2025-appendix A)
- CoralNet submission package (accession #5546)
- 13% ± 12% SD across 161 photographs.
Stressors
The site record reports 57% of coral tissue bleached at about 25.7°C-weeks DHW on the survey date (21 September 2024; NOAA Coral Reef Watch, Egypt virtual station). The site's headline frame shows a very large elongate table Acropora, more than a meter across, bleached uniformly white from its center to every branch tip (e.g., Image 4).
Fish and other fauna
Red anthias hang in curtains along the flanks.
Comparisons with other data
Apart from our own published survey shown here, we found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. If you would like to share yours, please email us.
CV model comparison
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The reference is this dive site's own published CoralNet point count by the author (Mayfield 2025, Environments 12:248, Appendix A; most frames annotated by CoralNet's AI, trained and checked by the author). The computer-vision rows are this site's own values: Claude is a blind point count of all of the site's edited photographs, and CoralSCOP is the site's finished survey of its edited photographs. They are on different frame sets from the published count, a row under 30 frames is indicative only, and no computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images.| Method | Hard coral cover (%) | Photos (n) ± SE |
|---|---|---|
| Published point count (CoralNet-assisted) | 13.2 | |
| CoralSCOP unedited | 24.1 | n = 168 |
| CoralSCOP edited | 23.8 | n = 148 |
| Claude (edited photos) | 16.5 | n = 147 · SE 1.3 |
The three computer-vision methods differ by 7.6 pp (16.5–24.1%) and read 3.3–10.9 pp above the published point count (13.2%); the headline is the published point count because it is the site's published value (CoralNet-assisted: most frames were annotated by CoralNet's AI, trained and checked by the author).
See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data are from Coral Reef Diagnostics and NOAA Coral Reef Watch.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.