Fiji - Lau Islands: Vanua Balavu
Part of the regional summaries: Fiji - Vanua Balavu, Fiji - Northern Lau (Vanua Balavu / Cicia / Nayau), and Fiji - Lau
2013-06-22
2013-06-23
2013-06-24
2013-06-25
2013-06-26
More info
Fiji (NOAA CRW virtual station)Vanua Balavu is the main island of Fiji's remote northern Lau group; this is an island-level marker, not a survey of a specific reef. A 2013 Global Reef Expedition survey found live coral cover ranging 2.5-47% across 19 stations here, a pre-cyclone baseline predating both Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston (2016) and today's regional heat exposure, which now averages 8.9 DHW — above the severe-bleaching threshold.
Ko Vanua Balavu na yanuyanu levu ena yatu Lau i vualiku, e yawa sara i Viti; oqo e dua ga na ivakatakilakila ni yanuyanu, e sega ni vakadidike ni dua na cakau. Ena 2013, e dua na vakadidike ni Global Reef Expedition e kunea ni ubi ni lase bula (live coral cover) e veitalia mai na 2.5-47% ena 19 na vanua ni vakadidike eke, e dua na ivakatagedegede taumada ni bera ni yaco na Cagilaba Bibi o Winston (Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston, 2016) kei na katakata ni wasawasa ena yasana oqo nikua, e 8.9 DHW na kena ivakatagedegede — e sivia na iyalayala ni vulavula bibi ni lase.
AI translation of this summary; the English is authoritative. (low confidence)
Two independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
Site description
Setting
Vanua Balavu is the main island of northern Lau, Fiji's remote easternmost archipelago.
Coral cover
- This is an island-level marker rather than a survey station, so it carries no coral-cover value of its own; Anderson's photographs and the transect data from these dives are on the station pages (FJVB52-FJVB70).
- Anderson's dive log notes a manta ray with a 3-m wingspan, a huge trumpet triton, branching Galaxea everywhere, and "turtle, black tip, dead coral" on the 26 June dive.
Stressors
Recent thermal exposure at the Fiji virtual station averages 8.9 degree-heating-weeks as an annual maximum (NOAA Coral Reef Watch, 2021-2025) — above the 8 DHW level at which severe bleaching and mortality are expected, and a decade later than the 2013 surveys. Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston also passed over Vanua Balavu in February 2016 (IBTrACS best track, NOAA NCEI), so the 2013 figures are a pre-cyclone baseline.
Comparisons with other data
Better-grounded numbers for the island do exist elsewhere on this map: the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation's Global Reef Expedition ran 19 benthic point-count stations around Vanua Balavu between 21 and 26 June 2013, returning live coral cover from 2.5% to 47%.
Independent context nearby: 2 Vatuvara Foundation Fiji / WCS Fiji surveys (via MERMAID) within 5 km, both in 2017, recorded 7.0–9.3% hard coral (mean 8.2%).
No underwater photographs from this site are on file.
Dive history
| Date | Time in | Max depth (m) | Bottom time (min) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-06-21 | 09:34 | 30.2 | 57 |
| 2013-06-21 | 12:20 | 15.2 | 65 |
| 2013-06-21 | 15:39 | 26.2 | 53 |
| 2013-06-22 | 09:20 | 31.4 | 62 |
| 2013-06-22 | 11:26 | 16.5 | 44 |
| 2013-06-22 | 15:17 | 12.5 | 47 |
| 2013-06-23 | 08:56 | 30.5 | 64 |
| 2013-06-23 | 11:20 | 31.7 | 54 |
| 2013-06-23 | 15:40 | 18.3 | 57 |
| 2013-06-24 | 08:37 | 24.4 | 63 |
| 2013-06-25 | 08:46 | 30.8 | 73 |
| 2013-06-25 | 11:37 | 30.8 | 52 |
| 2013-06-25 | 14:45 | 22.6 | 53 |
| 2013-06-26 | 08:01 | 25.9 | 56 |
| 2013-06-26 | 10:09 | 30.8 | 53 |
Independent surveys nearby
Within 5 km, 2 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 2017. The most recent nearby survey is from 2017, so these values predate recent heat stress.
Collected by other programs using different methods (MERMAID is a data platform: each MERMAID row names the organization that did the survey, and its method is in the row's hover text), 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vatuvara Foundation Fiji / WCS Fiji via MERMAID | Ada04 | 2017 | 9.3% | 4.51 km | Darling E, Fisher K, Greiner A, Miller K, Nand Y. 2017. 2017_Northern Lau. MERMAID |
| Vatuvara Foundation Fiji / WCS Fiji via MERMAID | Ada01 | 2017 | 7.0% | 4.68 km | Darling E, Fisher K, Greiner A, Miller K, Nand Y. 2017. 2017_Northern Lau. MERMAID |
Data & links
Data on this page are from the organizations named in the data sources above, not Coral Reef Diagnostics; Coral Reef Diagnostics has no coral cover estimate of its own at this site.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.