Indonesia - Ambon: Rhino City (Laha)

Setting

The second Laha muck dive of 2018-04-22, and the trip's best critter showing. Visibility ran moderate-to-good, clearer over the reef-flat than the sandy muck (e.g., Image 1).

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General benthic features

Rhino City splits into two zones: sandy muck carrying isolated soft-coral "trees" and gorgonian fans in cream, blue-gray, and purple, and a genuinely dense, healthy reef-flat section of thick Acropora staghorn/table thickets swarming with damsels and anthias (e.g., Image 2, Image 3).

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Confirmed genera include a large Diploastrea heliopora, Pocillopora acuta, massive Porites, Favites/Platygyra brain corals, leather corals, and a large frilly gray-white Turbinaria.

Coral cover

Coral cover — completed photographic analysis. CoralSCOP produced usable masks for 65 of 66 photographs (one ghost-pipefish macro frame failed), with a mean computer vision estimate of 33.3% (SD 21; median=31.3%; range=0.9–80%). The result accords with the image set's broad habitat split—locally dense Acropora tables and thickets in the shallows, then much sparser sand/rubble muck with isolated soft corals—but it is not a randomized benthic survey. Because selected reef vistas and macro portraits have different sampling footprints and the run has no independent point-count or second image method, 33.3% is retained as a flagged photographic index rather than published as transect-equivalent site cover. Coral cover: 33% — a single-method photographic index. The figure is a CoralSCOP computer vision over Anderson's own photographs (65 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.

Stressors

No crown-of-thorns or disease observed; a Culcita cushion star is present but distinct from Acanthaster. One colony shows a sharp two-tone red/cream polyp pattern with fully extended, healthy polyps -- reads as natural pigmentation rather than bleaching, though it's a genuinely striking pattern worth a second look if higher-resolution originals turn up.

Fish and other fauna

The standout find is a genuine Rhinopias (weedy scorpionfish) -- heavily camouflaged, filamentous green/purple skin, motionless on sand, caught in three separate frames -- alongside a likely dark-morph ornate ghost pipefish and a blue-phase ribbon eel photographed both calm and in an open-mouthed threat display near a diver's hand. A banded black-and-white crinoid and a well-camouflaged purple crab round out the macro life.

Comparisons with other data

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