Fiji - Matuku (FJMT10)
Part of the regional summaries: Fiji - Matuku, Fiji - Moala Group (Moala / Totoya / Matuku), and Fiji - Lau
More info
Fiji (NOAA CRW virtual station)Fore-reef sand flats at the base of a steep slope off Matuku, a volcanic island in Lau Province, surveyed in poor, silty visibility on a dive to 29 m. Plating Pachyseris and Echinopora are common at the slope base, and the survey team noted coral-eating Drupella snails and recent mortality scars on several colonies. Surveyed on the Living Oceans Foundation's Global Reef Expedition.
Na nuku savasava ena yasana i tuba ni cakau (fore reef) ena vu ni baba titobu mai Matuku, e dua na yanuyanu vulikano ena Yasana o Lau (Lau Province), a vakadidiketaki ena rairai ni wai e ca ka veidrukai ena nunu ki na 29 m. E levu na Pachyseris kei na Echinopora vakaiteba (plating) ena vu ni baba, ka vola na ilawalawa ni vakadidike na Drupella (snails) e kania na lase kei na mavoa ni mate vou ena vica na lase.
AI translation of this summary; the English is authoritative. (low confidence)
CTD-cast midpoint of 26.8–27.0°C
One independent survey station shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
Three other CRD dive sites with their own pages within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.
Site description
Setting
FJMT10 lies off Matuku, a volcanic island in the Moala Group of Lau Province, and was surveyed on 6 June 2013 during the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation's Global Reef Expedition. The expedition's own site notes place FJMT10 on fore-reef sand flats at the base of a steep slope, record poor visibility with suspended sediment, and note corallivorous Drupella snails on several colonies alongside recent mortality scars — the survey team's own observations, reported here as such. The same notes record plating Pachyseris and Echinopora colonies as common at the base of the slope.
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 26.9 m) recorded 38% live coral cover against 45% total algal cover, algae holding roughly 1.2 times the substrate coral did.
- Transect mean 38 ± 8.3% SE (n = 6 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is this all-transect mean.
Stressors
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. The Living Oceans Foundation transects here recorded 2.2% cyanobacteria and no recently dead coral on the transect lines.
Comparisons with other data
None of the coral colonies sampled here for physiological screening were flagged as outliers (Mayfield et al. 2017, PLoS ONE).
Dive record
Bottom time was 58 minutes.
No underwater photographs from this station are on file.
Independent surveys nearby
Within 5 km, 1 independent survey station recorded hard coral cover in 1999. The most recent nearby survey is from 1999, so these values predate recent heat stress. This site's own estimate (38%) is not compared with these surveys: none lies within 2 km.
Collected by other programs using different methods (Reef Check uses point-intercept transects), 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reef Check | North of Arua | 1999 | 39% | 4.88 km |
Data & links
- Download benthic survey data (CSV) ↗
- Download all LOF-GRE data (933 sites) ↗
- Photo portfolio ↗
- Coral Reef Diagnostics page for this area ↗
Data are from the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation Global Reef Expedition, Coral Reef Diagnostics, and the organizations named in the data sources above.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.