Fiji - Vanua Balavu (FJVB59)

Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation — Global Reef Expedition

Part of the regional summaries: Fiji - Vanua Balavu, Fiji - Northern Lau (Vanua Balavu / Cicia / Nayau), and Fiji - Lau

Outlier score: 3.89/5 (Vanua Balavu, n = 18 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)

2013-06-22

Coordinates

-17.2419, -178.8556

Coral cover

10%

Benthic transects+photo-quadrats

Observations

None tagged; see Stressors below

Heat stress

Most recent heat load record

25.8°C 0.0°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 info

Fiji (NOAA CRW virtual station)

Site summary

Read this summary in:

A lagoonal pinnacle station at Vanua Balavu (station CTD cast to 4 m) where the transect recorded 10% live coral; no algae figure was logged. The expedition's notes describe these pinnacles as massive framework build-ups with branching and tabular corals on their tops and sides, and Cyclone Winston passed over Vanua Balavu in 2016, after this survey. Surveyed on the Living Oceans Foundation's Global Reef Expedition.

CTD station depth

4 m

no logged dive; no surveys were done beyond 35 m

Water temp. during survey

27.2°Cⁱⁱ
CTD-cast midpoint; the cast read 27.2°C throughout

-0.6°C vs the 2013 mean sea temperature (27.8°C)

ii Station CTD-cast midpoint (LOF metadata), not a dive reading: the Living Oceans Foundation station metadata for Fiji give the CTD cast at FJVB59 on 22 June 2013 the same maximum and minimum, 27.16°C; the value shown is 27.2°C.

🗺 Detailed map of the Global Reef Expedition dive sites, Vanua Balavu, Fiji (Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation; opens in a new window)

Site description

Setting

FJVB59 is a Vanua Balavu station, surveyed on 22 June 2013 during the Global Reef Expedition with an in situ benthic transect (station CTD cast to 4 m). The expedition's site notes place it, with six other Vanua Balavu stations, on lagoonal pinnacle reefs: massive framework build-ups with branching and tabular corals on their tops and sides, ringed by extensive lagoonal sand flats.

Coral cover

Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
Live coral cover measured 10%.
No algal-cover value was logged for this transect, so there is no coral-versus-algae balance to report here; the coral figure stands alone.
On its own, the coral figure points to a reef zone with limited hard coral presence at the time the count was taken.

Stressors

Context rather than observation: the Fiji virtual station has averaged an annual maximum of 8.9 degree-heating-weeks over 2021-2025 (NOAA Coral Reef Watch), above the 8 DHW severe-bleaching level, and Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston passed over Vanua Balavu in February 2016 (IBTrACS best track, NOAA NCEI), well after this survey.

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.

No underwater photographs from this station are on file.

Data & links

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