Indonesia - Banda Islands: Shark Point (Pulau Ai)

Setting

Shark Point sits on the east side of Pulau Ai, in the Banda Islands of Maluku, and Anderson dived it once, on 27 April 2018, entering at 10:05 and running 65 minutes to a maximum of 30.2 m with an average depth of 13.11 m in 30.4°C water (dive average). Visibility was good and the water was open blue, so the profile is readable frame by frame: a deep sponge wall at the start, a long soft-coral and hydrocoral shoulder through the middle, and an Acropora-dominated back terrace at the end.

General benthic features

The opening wall (26 frames) drops steeply into blue water and is held by filter feeders rather than stony coral: meter-tall barrel sponges consistent with Xestospongia testudinaria, a large crimson vase sponge, black-coral bushes silhouetted off the lip, lacy gorgonians, and pink and mauve Dendronephthya-type soft corals set on a pavement of pink crustose coralline algae (e.g., Image 1, Image 4, Image 5).

145

Stony coral is scattered through it — large tan massive colonies consistent with Porites and Astreopora, gray-brown and pale yellow-green laminar plates (Echinopora- and Montipora-type), meandroid brains, and small Acropora and Pocillopora thickets (e.g., Image 3).

3

A leather-coral and fire-coral shoulder follows (18 frames), and it is the most distinctive ground on the dive: thick-lobed, white-tipped Sinularia and Lobophytum leather corals carpet the slope almost continuously, with cream Sarcophyton toadstools among them, golden-brown Millepora-type hydrocoral blades and bushes, cream ruffled Turbinaria vases, and a Diploastrea-type dome (e.g., Image 2).

2

A close look settles the identification: the thick fingers are octocoral tissue, not Porites. Five frames follow a hawksbill turtle across foliose plates and an orange-tan meandroid brain, and 19 more cross a mixed bommie shoulder of tabulate Acropora plates roughly a meter across, dense orange-brown fine-branched bushes, and further Sinularia fields. The back terrace (19 frames) is this site's signature and the best coral on the dive: branching, corymbose, and tabulate Acropora, orange-brown fine-branched thickets, digitate colonies, and Millepora running unbroken to the limit of visibility, with Pocillopora, red-brown Dendronephthya, purple and lavender encrusting colonies, and a pale lime-green massive Porites set into it (e.g., Image 7).

7

Two ambient-light frames over sand beneath a sponge-covered overhang close the dive.

Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 33% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 88 of Anderson's edited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.

Stressors

Condition was good: color ran tan to brown, and the photo review saw no disease, no crown-of-thorns, and no predation scars in the 90 frames; one colony was partly bleached, and a computer-vision point count called 0.7% of coral points bleached (2 of 88 photos). One large-polyp massive colony was partly bleached: white to pale lavender over its lower two-thirds and tan on top. The whitened branching colonies beside it are cream Sinularia, a natural color. One staghorn thicket stands on a turfed dead base, the one clear sign of older breakage.

Fish and other fauna

The hawksbill, a pink-and-white scorpionfish consistent with Scorpaenopsis perched on a leather coral, a ghost pipefish consistent with Solenostomus over sand, a squirrelfish sheltering inside a barrel sponge, fusilier and anthias clouds, chromis, a Moorish idol, bannerfish, black crinoids, and a Diadema-type urchin — but no shark, despite the name.

Comparisons with other data

Coral Triangle Center (CTC) surveyed a nearby station (Ay Timur) between 2012 and 2019, 0.32 km from the pin. Within 5 km, seven independent stations recorded station-year means of 19–64% hard coral cover between 2012 and 2025; the nearest, Coral Triangle Center (CTC) at Ay Timur (04), 0.32 km away, read 19–55% between 2012 and 2019.

Other notes

Ninety frames survive, shot on a single Canon PowerShot G11 between 10:06:59 and 11:05:15.