Indonesia - Halmahera: Kusu Drift (round 2)
Part of the regional summaries: Indonesia - Halmahera and Indonesia - Maluku
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North Maluku, Indonesia (NOAA CRW virtual station)Kusu Drift's second dive opens in the same hazy, low-visibility water that plagued the earlier flooded-camera dive, but develops into a colorful and densely built reef stretch — vivid salmon and magenta staghorn coral fields and stacked tabulate tables. One pale cauliflower-form colony is flagged as possibly bleached or a natural pale morph, not part of a wider pattern. A blind Claude computer-vision point count puts coral cover around 43%.
Penyelaman kedua di Kusu Drift dimulai di air keruh berjarak pandang rendah yang sama dengan penyelaman sebelumnya yang kameranya kebanjiran, tetapi berkembang menjadi bentangan terumbu yang berwarna dan padat - hamparan karang tanduk rusa berwarna salmon dan magenta cerah serta meja tabulat yang bertumpuk. Satu koloni pucat berbentuk kembang kol ditandai mungkin memutih atau merupakan morf pucat alami, bukan bagian dari pola yang lebih luas. Penghitungan titik buta oleh computer vision Claude menempatkan tutupan karang sekitar 43%.
Terjemahan ringkasan ini oleh AI; versi bahasa Inggris yang berlaku.
These are unedited originals; edited versions will replace them.
This page shows 50 of the 106 photographs from this site, including every one the text cites.
18 of the 50 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
Kusu Drift, round 2 (Halmahera dive 16), opens in hazy, low-visibility water on a coralline-pink and sponge-encrusted wall with divers and a rope/line visible, and cover in this deep stretch is patchy and low (e.g., Image 2, Image 11, Image 43, Image 47, Image 53).
Anderson's field note: “absolutely ripping currents for about 20 minutes straight, ended up in beautiful shallows.”
General benthic features
After the opening stretch the reef develops steadily into a colorful and densely built reef stretch: extensive fields of fine-branching staghorn corals in vivid salmon-pink, magenta, and pale lavender run near-continuous across dozens of frames (e.g., Image 3, Image 13, Image 19, Image 24, Image 34, Image 42, Image 51, Image 52).
Large overlapping table corals recur through the second half of the dive, often stacked several deep, alongside massive tan-brown domes and boulders threaded through the branching fields (e.g., Image 6, Image 3, Image 20, Image 32, Image 5, Image 54).
Gorgonian fans, a soft coral/anemone-like cream rosette, and scattered fish (chromis, damsels, an eel-shaped fish crossing sand) round out the fauna.
Coral cover
- Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
- Coral cover: 43% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 105 of Anderson's unedited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.
Stressors
One pale-white cauliflower-form colony sits among normally pigmented tan-green neighbors in one frame — isolated and hedged as possible partial bleaching or a natural pale morph, not part of a wider pattern. No disease, crown-of-thorns, or predation was seen in any of the 105 frames reviewed.
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.
CV model comparison
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A few low-cover photos (sand, rubble, or open bottom) pull the mean down; the median is the typical photo. No computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images, so treat this as indicative rather than a measurement; it is revised as the methods improve.More info
DINOv3 and CoralSCOP were run on the same photos and are listed for comparison. No diver transect exists for this trip, so agreement between the rows is not accuracy, and no computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images; treat every row as indicative.| Method | Hard coral cover (%) | Photos (n) ± SE |
|---|---|---|
| In-house DINOv3 | 31.8 | n = 105 · SE 1.1 |
| CoralSCOP unedited | 37.9 | n = 105 · SE 1.6 |
| Claude | 43.0 | n = 105 · SE 2.4 |
The two computer-vision methods agree within 6.1 pp (31.8–37.9%) and read 5.1–11.2 pp below Claude's blind point count (43.0%); the headline is Claude's blind point count because no transect or manual count exists here.
See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data are from Coral Reef Diagnostics.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.