Fiji - Vanua Balavu (FJVB65)

Setting

Visibility was bright but slightly milky.

General benthic features

A diver in full kit hovers over an expanse of clean white sand broken by low, algae-crusted rubble mounds; the few living colonies on them are small — a scattering of pale corymbose Acropora and knobby heads, none more than a hand's span, spaced far apart on old pitted framework (e.g., Image 6).

6

What life there is rewards a close look. One mound carries a fine colony of bubble coral, Plerogyra sinuosa, its translucent grape-like vesicles inflated in soft tan and gray, wedged against a patch of vivid crimson encrusting sponge with tissue clean and unbleached (e.g., Image 1, Image 2).

12

The wider set does not change the account of the site, because only two of the frames are reef-scale: Image 7 and Image 6 both look across the same low, algae-crusted rubble mound sitting on clean white sand, its surface pitted old framework carrying only small, widely spaced colonies, with a diver in kit alongside for scale in each.

7

Coral cover

• Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
• The Global Reef Expedition transects here recorded 3.3% live hard coral. Live hard coral measured on in situ benthic transects during the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation Global Reef Expedition. Transect data are this site's authoritative cover value; no computer vision or image-derived product overrides it.
• Transect mean 3.3 ± 1.3% SE (n = 4 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is this all-transect mean.

Stressors

Nothing in the set bears on benthic composition beyond the two mound frames; there is no bleaching, disease, or crown-of-thorns damage in any frame, though at this frame count and in this light that is a weak negative. The Living Oceans Foundation transects here recorded 13% cyanobacteria and no recently dead coral; they carry no bleaching, disease, or crown-of-thorns field.

Fish and other fauna

Two frames are nudibranchs: a small white animal with dark blue-purple longitudinal lines held on a fingertip over sand, with a pointer or torch in frame (e.g., Image 5), and a second — white with fine dark stripes and pale orange margin — photographed in place on encrusting-algae-covered rubble (e.g., Image 4).

54

Four frames show a manta ray passing low over the sand and rubble, dark against the pale bottom, filling the frame in two of them and photographed from above as it banks in another (e.g., Image 9, Image 10, Image 11, Image 12).

9101112

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.