Fiji - Mago (FJMG50)

General benthic features

The depth sequence is clear: the upper slope is coral-dense and the deep face is not. The upper terrace appears in four frames as a broad, densely occupied shoulder: tan and pale-green tabulate Acropora plates, staghorn and corymbose colonies, mauve and lilac corymbose Acropora, small porous massives, olive-green digitate colonies, and vivid red-orange encrusting sponge, all bound together by pink and white crustose coralline algae (e.g., Image 5, Image 6, Image 7, Image 11).

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Below that the profile steepens: two frames look along a coral-covered ramp dropping into open blue (Image 20, and the shoulder of Image 18), and one shows a near-vertical, hazy, green-cast buttress where visible coral thins sharply and encrusting growth and dark framework take over, the wall behind the diver in Image 16.

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Coral cover

• Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
• Coral cover 42%, from the LOF-GRE in situ benthic transect (the mean of all of this station's own transects in the expedition's per-transect benthic data) — a diver transect and the authoritative figure here; the strong contrast between the shallow frames and the deep frames is a reminder that a single site figure averages across that gradient.
• Transect mean 42 ± 7.1% SE (n = 7 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is this all-transect mean.

Stressors

Image 10 and Image 11 show two large tables.

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Each is filled by a large tabulate Acropora — one of them a meter-plus plate over a second, collapsed table beneath it — that renders pale gray-white under a strong blue cast, with brownish polyp pigment still visible across the plates and red-brown undersides, while neighboring staghorn and corymbose colonies in the same frame are normally pigmented. Paling cannot be separated from natural pale color in blue light in these frames; the site's own survey note, retained below, records COTS predation with large areas of white corals and several large tables turned over by possible storm damage, which may account for the collapsed one. No feeding starfish is visible in any frame. That is a description of two colonies, not an estimate of how much of the reef was affected. Anderson's sampling sheet records two of the five colonies sampled here as partly bleached (F106 50%, F108 20%), and the frames of F108 show its pale branches (e.g., Image 12, Image 13, Image 14).

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None of the four coral colonies from this site with an outlier score was flagged as a physiological outlier (Mayfield et al. 2017, PLoS ONE). The Living Oceans Foundation transects here recorded 7.9% cyanobacteria and no recently dead coral.

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.

Other notes

Two frames are the divers themselves — one finning down a wall near the dive's 30.5 m maximum (e.g., Image 15) and one of a second diver over the deep face, where Anderson noted black coral on the wall (e.g., Image 16).

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Survey team's site notes: Spur and groove assemblages with steep slope with large isolated colonies of Porites lobata and tabular acroporids. Some evidence of COTS predations with large areas of white corals were present. Halimeda algae clumping were found interspersed among branching corals. Large sheeting colonies and plating corals were common on the steep slopes. Several large table acroporids had been turned over from possible storm damage. Colonies were common around 30 m at the base of the steep slope.