Fiji - Fulaga (FJFU24)

Setting

FJFU24 is a numbered benthic station in the Fulaga cluster of southern Lau, surveyed on 11 June 2013 during the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation's Global Reef Expedition.

Coral cover

• Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
• An in situ point-count transect (station CTD cast to 25.0 m) recorded 43% live coral cover with 43% total algal cover — coral and algae essentially level; the remaining 15% of the transect was sand, rubble, soft corals, and other benthos that neither figure captures.
• Coral cover 43% (the expedition's in situ transects).
• Transect mean 43 ± 7.0% SE (n = 5 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is this all-transect mean.

Stressors

The Living Oceans Foundation transects here recorded 0.8% cyanobacteria and no recently dead coral; they carry no bleaching, disease, or crown-of-thorns field. Recent thermal exposure at the Fiji virtual station has averaged an annual maximum of 8.9 degree-heating-weeks over 2021-2025 (NOAA Coral Reef Watch), above the 8 DHW level at which severe bleaching and mortality are expected. That is a station figure from a decade after this survey, not a condition observed on the day.

Comparisons with other data

Apart from the Living Oceans Foundation survey shown here, we found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. If you would like to share yours, please email us.

Dive record

Bottom time was 61 minutes.

Other notes

Of the coral colonies sampled here for physiological screening, none were flagged as outliers (Mayfield et al. 2017, PLoS ONE) — a clean result on that particular measure.