Fiji - Totoya (FJTO01)

General benthic features

The Totoya frames are working shots rather than reefscapes: this is what a physiology sampling station looks like mid-dive. A gloved hand holds a numbered tag against a broad, low-spreading branching colony while stainless bone cutters and a white sample vial wait alongside; a transect tape runs across the frame behind, and a black mesh collection bag hangs off the reef (e.g., Image 5).

5

In another frame a small knobby-branched Pocillopora colony sits on coralline-crusted rubble with the cutters laid beside it and a black-and-white speckled cowrie-like snail nearby (e.g., Image 3).

3

A third shows an instrument plate cable-tied to bare pavement, three pendant temperature/light loggers strapped in a row next to a cylindrical logger in silver tape (e.g., Image 2).

2

Around all of this, the substrate is heavily worked over: rust and olive turf and fleshy algae covering old framework, pink coralline crusts, patches of white sand, red encrusting sponge, small mounding and brain-textured heads, and thin-branched acroporids at the frame edges.

Coral cover

• Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
• Point-count survey put living coral at 28% here.
• Transect mean 28 ± 5.1% SE (n = 5 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is this all-transect mean.

Stressors

Tissue on the sampled colonies looks intact — no bleaching, disease lesions, or crown-of-thorns damage in view. The Living Oceans Foundation transects here recorded 7.8% cyanobacteria and no recently dead coral; they carry no bleaching, disease, or crown-of-thorns field.

Comparisons with other data

Apart from the Living Oceans Foundation survey shown here, we found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. Within 5 km, three WCS Fiji via MERMAID stations recorded station-year means of 43–64% hard coral cover in 2011; the nearest, WCS Fiji via MERMAID at TY10, 4.77 km away, read 53% in 2011.

Other notes

Survey team's site notes: Coral community composition is determined by the development stage of each patch. In the early stage, the coral community is dominated by massive species (e.g., Porites sp.) which build to form a pinnacle.