Fiji - Totoya (FJTO02)

One contrast runs through the full set: this reef alternates between densely packed, extremely diverse patches and broad stretches of low-relief, coralline-crusted framework carrying only scattered colonies. The dense, diverse patches are the ones Anderson singled out. Image 4 and Image 3 are the two busiest frames — golden-yellow knobbed and finger-forming colonies, tan and cream corymbose Acropora, orange-brown corymbose plates, white-tipped digitate colonies, small tabulate plates, and encrusting sheets interlocking with almost no gap between them, all bedded in red and pink coralline crust.

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Image 12 and Image 10 are similar but shot wider, with a vivid chartreuse-green branching colony standing out against olive and tan neighbors.

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Image 5 is Anderson's sampled colony 4 (P. damicornis), which the sheet records as healthy: tan tissue with white growth tips.

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Against those, Image 7, Image 14, and Image 13 look across wide, gently sloping terraces where mauve and purple coralline-crusted pavement is the dominant surface and small tan, olive, and gray colonies are spread thinly over it — the same reef with a very different texture, and as much a part of the site as the more photogenic frames (e.g., Image 6, Image 15).

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Individual landmarks recur: a tan tabulate Acropora plate perched on a pale coralline mound in Image 15, a large golden-orange corymbose colony low in Image 6, and stepped ridges dropping into clear blue in Image 9, Image 6, and Image 8.

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Fish are a consistent presence rather than a subject — shoals of small fusiliers and planktivores stream over the reef in Image 11, Image 9, and Image 8, and a few larger fish appear in Image 13, as Anderson noted (e.g., Image 8, Image 9, Image 11).

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Divers appear at the top of Image 14 and Image 10. No bleaching front, disease lesion, or crown-of-thorns feeding scar is visible in any of the 15 frames; Images 1-2 are the tagged sampled colonies 4 and 5.

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Coral cover 36%, 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 for this site. Transect mean 36 ± 5.6% SE (n = 5 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is this all-transect mean.

FJTO02 (Totoya, Lau Archipelago): surveyed 3 Jun 2013 during the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation Global Reef Expedition. Coral cover 36% (point-count surveys). Neither of the two coral colonies from this site with an outlier score was flagged as a physiological outlier (Mayfield et al. 2017, PLoS ONE).

Survey team's site notes. A diverse benthic community with the dominant scleractinian community differing by location. Shallower areas may be dominated by branching acroporids and (sub)massive poritids with encrusting and plating corals also present. Small mounds of hosting diverse mixed coral assemblages may be present. At greater depths, colonies take on plating morphologies and form a series of shingle-like structures. Prominent macroalgae include Halimeda, Caulerpa, and Dictyota. High coral cover, with large spur and groove ridges. Sediment filled grooves, with large pieces of rubble. Shallower depths are dominated with small Acropora and Pocillopora colonies. Fore reef sand flats benthic cover is usually very low because the substrate is mobile and largely unconsolidated thus inhibiting colonization by benthic organisms. In some cases, large Porites lobata colonies and tabular acroporids occur within the sand flats, especially in deeper areas (30-50 m). Macroalgae become more common with depth due to the abatement of wave energy with increasing depth. The deeper fore reef habitats at the base of the reef were generally low relief sand flats, mostly uncolonized. Often there were sparse assemblages of cyanobacteria and small patches of macroalgae, along with isolated larger corals. The Living Oceans Foundation transects here recorded 12% cyanobacteria and no recently dead coral.