Coral Reef Diagnostics

Fiji - Fulaga (FJFU26)

Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation — Global Reef Expedition
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Part of the regional summaries: Fiji - Fulaga, Fiji - Southern Lau (Kabara / Fulaga), and Fiji - Lau

05
Coral Health Index: TBD
Outlier score: 4.17/5 (Fulaga, n = 6 corals with an outlier score). The share of those corals whose molecular stress profile was an outlier, rescaled to 0-5 (5 = no outliers); an island-level measure (Mayfield et al. 2017), not a Coral Health Index.
Country
Fiji
Survey date(s)
2013-06-11
Coordinates
-19.1011, -178.6011
Coral cover
55%
± 11% SE, n = 4 transects · Benthic transects+photo-quadrats
Observations
None tagged; see Stressors below
Heat stress
Most recent heat load record
25.8°C0.0°C-weeks
26 Oct 2026 · No heat stress
5-year thermal stress load
5-year mean max. degree heating weeks (DHW)
8.9°C-weeksi
2021–2025
NOAA Coral Reef Watch — Fiji virtual station
i 5-year mean max. DHW is the mean of the annual maximum DHWs over the five complete years named above, not conditions today.
More infoFiji (NOAA CRW virtual station)
Site summary
Read this summary in:

A fore-reef station off Fulaga, the raised limestone island in southern Lau, with 55% coral cover; the survey team dived it to 14.9 m. The fore reef here is spur-and-groove, with stands of plating and foliose coral on the gentler slopes. Surveyed on the Living Oceans Foundation's Global Reef Expedition.

Max. depth (team dive log)
14.9 m
expedition team log maximum (not Anderson's own dive)
Water temp. during survey
26.5°Cii
CTD-cast midpoint; the cast read 26.5°C throughout
-0.6°C vs the 2013 mean sea temperature (27.1°C)
ii Station CTD-cast midpoint (LOF station records), not a dive reading: midpoint of the station's maximum and minimum CTD water temperature (Living Oceans Foundation Fiji station records); range 26.47–26.50°C.
Bottom time
60 min
in at 15:43

Three other CRD dive sites with their own pages within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.

🗺 Detailed map of the Global Reef Expedition dive sites, Fulaga, Fiji (Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation; opens in a new window)

Site description

Setting

FJFU26 sits off Fulaga, a raised limestone island with an enclosed lagoon in southern Lau, Fiji's remote eastern archipelago. The Global Reef Expedition surveyed it on 11 June 2013 with in situ benthic point-count transects (n = 4; station CTD cast to 34.7 m). The survey team's bottom time was 60 minutes.

General benthic features

The expedition's own site notes for the Fulaga fore reef describe spur-and-groove structure with monospecific plating and foliaceous coral stands on gentler slopes, shifting to encrusting and laminar growth where the slope steepens; that is the survey team's habitat characterization, not an observation drawn from imagery here. The same notes describe the gentler fore-reef slope as scattered mounds and spurs of coral framework running perpendicular to the reef crest, with a build-up of corals, often a ridge or mound perforated by shore-perpendicular channels, running parallel to the crest.

Coral cover

Stressors

The Living Oceans Foundation transects here recorded no cyanobacteria and no recently dead coral; they carry no bleaching, disease, or crown-of-thorns field. Recent thermal exposure at the Fiji virtual station averages an annual maximum of 8.9 degree-heating-weeks (NOAA Coral Reef Watch, 2021-2025), above the 8 DHW severe-bleaching level — a decade after this baseline.

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.

No underwater photographs from this station are on file.

Data & links

Data are from the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation Global Reef Expedition, Coral Reef Diagnostics, and NOAA Coral Reef Watch.

© Coral Reef Diagnostics.