Coral Reef Diagnostics

Fiji - Moala (FJML15)

Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation — Global Reef Expedition
⬇ Download this page as a report card

Part of the regional summaries: Fiji - Moala, Fiji - Moala Group (Moala / Totoya / Matuku), and Fiji - Lau

05
Coral Health Index: TBD
Outlier score: 4.50/5 (Moala, n = 10 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)
2013-06-08
Coordinates
-18.5919, 179.9731
Coral cover
23%
± 3.4% SE, n = 5 transects · Benthic transects+photo-quadrats
Observations
cyanobacteria
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:

An exposed fore-reef slope on Moala's east side, where large Porites and Diploastrea colonies line the slope and small Platygyra, Lobophyllia, and Echinopora colonies are common, at 23% coral cover. Coralline algae is abundant, and cyanobacteria covered a notable 13% of the transects. Surveyed on the Living Oceans Foundation's Global Reef Expedition.

Max. depth dived
29 m
dive-log maximum
Water temp. during survey
27.2°Cii
CTD-cast midpoint of 27.2–27.3°C
-0.2°C vs the 2013 mean sea temperature (27.4°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 27.15–27.25°C.
Bottom time
57 min
in at 09:08

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, Moala, Fiji (Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation; opens in a new window)

Site description

Setting

The expedition's site notes for Moala place FJML15, with FJML16, FJML22, and FJML23, on the fore-reef slope of the island's east side.

General benthic features

The same notes record large colonies of Porites and Diploastrea on the sides of the slope. Coming up the slope from 32 m, coral cover was not very high, but crustose coralline algae was common. Small colonies of Platygyra, Lobophyllia, and Echinopora were common.

Coral cover

Stressors

Cyanobacteria covered 13% of the transects. The Living Oceans Foundation transects here recorded no recently dead coral.

Comparisons with other data

The expedition's own site table classifies FJML15 as a barrier reef on an exposed aspect, surveyed on the fore reef, outside the lagoon. Alongside the hard coral already reported for this site, the same transects recorded 34% crustose coralline algae, 17% turf, 0.2% macroalgae, and 13% cyanobacteria. Non-living substrate came to 75% pavement, 0.2% dead coral, and 2.6% rubble. Paired fish transects recorded about 43 fish species per transect and about 19 kg per 100 m2 of biomass. The benthic figures are means of all of this station's own transects in the expedition's per-transect benthic records, and the fish figures come from its paired fish transects; all are survey results, not photographic estimates.

Dive record

FJML15 (Moala, Lau Archipelago): surveyed 8 Jun 2013 during the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation Global Reef Expedition.

No underwater photographs from this station are on file.

Data & links

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

© Coral Reef Diagnostics.