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 30.0°C water. 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 macro frame 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

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. Anderson is still comparing computer-vision models, and these figures will be updated as the methods improve.

Stressors

Condition was uniformly good: color ran tan to brown throughout and no bleaching, no disease, no crown-of-thorns, and no predation scars were seen in any of the 90 frames. Every pale colony was crop-checked and resolved to living pigmented tissue or naturally cream octocoral — the lavender-gray colony in one frame has expanded polyps and is consistent with Galaxea, and the whitened branching colonies beside it are cream Sinularia. One staghorn thicket stands on a turfed dead base, the one clear sign of older breakage.

Fish and other fauna

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

No independent survey was made at this exact site; the nearest ones are listed in the table below.

Other notes

Ninety frames survive, shot on a single Canon PowerShot G11 body between 10:06:59 and 11:05:15, and every one of them was reviewed.