Indonesia - Ambon: Air Manis (Laha)

Setting

Air Manis is muck-with-patch-reef topography: a sand/silt/rubble bottom interspersed with raised coral bommies and low ridges carrying surprisingly dense live cover -- near-100% Acropora/Porites carpets on the bommie tops against bare sand between them (e.g., Image 1).

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Visibility ran moderate-to-good over the bommies, hazier and greener over the flatter muck.

General benthic features

Genera confirmed include table and staghorn Acropora, Montipora, Euphyllia, Seriatopora caliendrum, a fluorescent-green Stylophora, Pocillopora meandrina, large Porites domes, brain corals (Platygyra/Symphyllia), fire coral (Millepora), and soft leather corals (e.g., Image 2).

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Coral cover

Coral cover — completed photographic analysis. CoralSCOP processed all 72 photographs and returned a mean computer vision estimate of 30.6% (SD 23; median=25.7%). That number is not literal site-wide benthic cover: these are selected dive photographs mixing wide reef scenes, coral portraits, and fishing-impact documentation, and individual outputs range from 0.8% on a visibly coral-covered scene to 126.7% on a close-up. The impossible value above 100% confirms overlapping masks, while the very low values on obvious coral carpets show under-segmentation. The 30.6% result is therefore retained as a flagged photographic index consistent with the visibly patchy habitat—not published as transect-equivalent coral cover—until an independent point-count or second image method is available. Coral cover: 31% — a single-method photographic index. The figure is a CoralSCOP computer vision over Anderson's own photographs (72 frames), with no second method to cross-check it. CoralSCOP sums retained mask fractions with overlaps possible and segments coral-shaped objects rather than living tissue, so it scores standing dead skeleton as coral and does not measure cover the way a transect does; against in situ transects it reads high. One frame in this set scored 126.7%, which is impossible as a cover value and is a mask-overlap artifact of the method — a caution about the index, not about the reef.

Stressors

Human-impact flag. At least five frames show a fine monofilament gillnet draped across coral bommies and the water column, with small fish visibly trapped in it -- clear evidence of active or recently set fishing gear smothering part of the reef. One soft (leather) coral colony shows a single lobe sharply bleached bright white against otherwise healthy tan-olive tissue -- a localized, single-colony partial bleaching event, not reef-wide. No crown-of-thorns or disease seen.

Fish and other fauna

Dense schools of chromis and fusiliers swarm the bommies alongside anthias, butterflyfish, a moray, and abundant crinoids; a Culcita cushion star (not a crown-of-thorns) turns up on the sand (e.g., Image 3, Image 4, Image 5).

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Comparisons with other data

No prior survey data from this site. If you would like to share yours, please email us.

Dive record

The first of three muck dives near Laha on Ambon's south coast, 2018-04-22.