Chagos Archipelago - Peros Banhos (BIPB74)

Setting

BIPB74 is a protected submerged lagoonal patch reef inside Peros Banhos at 26 m, and one of the highest-cover reefs in the whole archipelago: 62.4% living coral against 32.0% algae, 7th of 109 Chagos sites, with bare substrate almost absent at 2.2% (e.g., Image 1).

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General benthic features

Across 25 genera it is effectively a single-genus reef, Acropora holding 70% of all coral, Pavona the only other genus above 2.3% (e.g., Image 3, Image 8, Image 11).

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The depth profile splits that average three ways: the shallowest transect is the mixed one, Acropora under half the coral and Pavona a quarter of it; the middle is a near-monoculture at 71% cover with Acropora at 86%; the deepest brings in Porites and Montipora.

Coral cover

The image cover figures (CoralNet 32.8%, Coralscapes 33.7%) pool both dives and so describe neither.

Stressors

On 18 April published bleaching was 5.35%, in the lower third of the archipelago on the site table's Mean(%bleaching) column, the first CoralNet training run, and the photographs matched — a handful of stark-white tables among pigmented neighbors (e.g., Image 2).

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Its 16 reviewed frames show a reef visibly worse, a mosaic of whitened tabular and branching Acropora and wholly white Pocillopora and free-living fungiids, while the dark maroon foliose plates stay fully pigmented throughout (e.g., Image 4, Image 5, Image 9).

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No crown-of-thorns or disease in either dive.

Fish and other fauna

A hawksbill turtle was photographed resting on a bed of pale tables.

Comparisons with other data

No prior survey data from this site. If you would like to share yours, please email us.

Dive record

The site was dived twice.

Other notes

The 1 May revisit thirteen days later was photographed but never scored: no BIPB74B row exists in any published table, so the correct entry for May bleaching here is "not scored".