Fiji - Matuku (FJMT14)

Setting

The wide frames give the setting: a low, broad rise that Anderson recorded as the top of a small seamount (e.g., Image 8), rolling over into blue water on more than one side (e.g., Image 2, Image 3, Image 5, Image 6, Image 8).

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General benthic features

The surface is a mosaic of small colonies on heavily encrusted framework — pale corymbose and digitate Acropora, knobby Pocillopora-type heads, low tables, smooth to knobbly mounding colonies, mustard and lime encrusting sheets, and upright leafy fronds — with pink, mauve, and deep red coralline crust and rust-red turf between them (e.g., Image 2, Image 3, Image 5, Image 6, Image 9, Image 14).

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Anderson noted crustose coralline algae in one of these frames (e.g., Image 14), and it is genuinely conspicuous: in several frames the pink-red crust covers more visible surface than the living coral does. Soft corals are present as a real component rather than a footnote — Anderson noted exactly that mix in one frame (e.g., Image 5), and mustard-olive leathery colonies show clearly in it and in the shallow crest frames. Four frames are close work. One is a portrait of a small cream-and-tan branching colony growing out of red coralline crust, which Anderson identified as Pocillopora damicornis (e.g., Image 10): tissue is intact and continuous over the whole colony with darker tan at the branch bases grading to pale cream at the tips, no exposed skeleton and no algal overgrowth — the frames cannot separate natural pale pigmentation from mild paling and no bleaching is asserted here.

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A second is a true macro of expanded white polyps standing out of tan tissue on a Pocillopora surface (e.g., Image 12), normal appearance for a feeding colony.

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A third is a fully pigmented mint-green and tan colony of thick blunt lobes surrounded by coralline crust and green algal tufts, which Anderson identified as Stylophora pistillata (e.g., Image 13).

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Coral cover

• Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
• Transect mean 29 ± 3.5% SE (n = 5 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is this all-transect mean.

Stressors

No disease lesions, crown-of-thorns feeding scars, predation scars, or fresh mortality are visible in any of this station's frames, although the survey team's notes record Drupella snails and some recent mortality scars on the acroporids. The one coral colony from this site with an outlier score was not flagged as a physiological outlier (Mayfield et al. 2017, PLoS ONE). The Living Oceans Foundation transects here recorded 7.2% cyanobacteria and no recently dead coral on the transect lines.

Fish and other fauna

One frame is a school of small blue-black fish streaming up over the crest against the surface light, the busiest fish frame in the set (e.g., Image 8).

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

About a quarter of this station's frames are close-in colony work rather than habitat photography. All species names above are Anderson's own field calls; the photographs do not independently support them.

Survey team's site notes: Visibility was poor, with a fair amount of suspended sedimentation. Large branching acroporids with some recent mortality was common. Drupella snails were found on several colonies which could account for some recent mortality scars on the acroporids. Plating Pachyseris and Echinopora colonies common at base of slope.