Indonesia - Ambon: Laha-2
Part of the regional summaries: Indonesia - Ambon and Indonesia - Maluku
More info
Maluku, Indonesia (NOAA CRW virtual station)Laha-2 is overwhelmingly sand-silt and shell rubble with almost no coral structure, but an outstanding critter dive — harlequin shrimp, an octopus wearing bivalve-shell armor, four frogfish, two seahorses, and multiple morays. Glass bottles, monofilament line, and PVC debris are woven into the substrate the animals are using as habitat.
Laha-2 hampir seluruhnya pasir-lanau dan pecahan cangkang dengan hampir tanpa struktur karang, tetapi merupakan penyelaman hewan kecil yang luar biasa - udang harlequin, gurita yang memakai cangkang kerang sebagai pelindung, empat ikan kodok, dua kuda laut, dan beberapa belut moray. Botol kaca, tali monofilamen, dan sampah PVC terjalin di substrat yang dipakai hewan-hewan itu sebagai habitat.
Terjemahan ringkasan ini oleh AI; versi bahasa Inggris yang berlaku.
Two other CRD dive sites with their own pages within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.
6 of the 39 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
The third of the Laha dives, 2018-04-22 — overwhelmingly sand-silt bottom littered with dead shell middens and rubble, with almost no coherent reef structure (e.g., Image 4).
Visibility ran mediocre and greenish, typical of a nutrient-rich muck site — workable for macro, poor for wide shots.
General benthic features
Only a few frames show coral at all (a juvenile Pocillopora damicornis in its natural color Image 22, a coral base beside a host anemone, and a hammer coral); this is a critter dive, not a coral survey, and the description here is scoped accordingly.
Coral cover
- No coral-cover estimate: this is a muck dive, and the 42 photographs are overwhelmingly fish schools, cephalopods, frogfish, morays, anemones, sponges, shell rubble, and debris, with almost no hard coral in view.
Stressors
Human-impact flag. A glass bottle and jar sit embedded in the shell rubble near the cuttlefish, tangled monofilament fishing line runs through several frames, and a PVC pipe fragment and fabric scrap lie beside one of the moray shots — debris is woven into the substrate the critters are using as habitat, not an isolated piece of litter (e.g., Image 2, Image 3).
A hammer coral is pale across its sun-exposed top (solar bleaching) in one of Anderson's unedited frames (e.g., Image 41); no disease or crown-of-thorns was observed, though with almost no live coral present this has limited scope.
Fish and other fauna
The macro life is excellent: harlequin shrimp, a shell-carrying octopus using bivalve halves as portable armor, resting cuttlefish (including one strobe-lit shot), at least four frogfish in different colors, two seahorses, four-plus moray eels (including a striking black-and-white speckled morph), a lionfish among tube sponges, a well-camouflaged scorpionfish, and two large bait-ball schools (e.g., Image 5).
Comparisons with other data
We found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. If you would like to share yours, please email us.
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.