Indonesia - Halmahera: Pantai Falajawa
Part of the regional summaries: Indonesia - Halmahera and Indonesia - Maluku
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North Maluku, Indonesia (NOAA CRW virtual station)A Ternate town-waterfront night dive dominated by walking sharks — at least two individuals (most likely the Halmahera walking shark) foraging across rubble and calcareous algae beds in roughly a quarter of all frames — alongside a Spanish dancer, several nudibranch species, and a camouflaged octopus.
Penyelaman malam di tepi kota Ternate yang didominasi hiu berjalan — sedikitnya dua ekor (kemungkinan besar hiu berjalan Halmahera) yang mencari makan di hamparan pecahan karang dan alga berkapur, muncul pada kira-kira seperempat dari seluruh bingkai — bersama seekor penari Spanyol, beberapa jenis nudibranch, dan seekor gurita yang menyamar.
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35 of the 41 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
A night dive in Ternate Harbor, on the town waterfront, worked as macro.
General benthic features
The substrate is low-relief rubble, sand, and turf-covered pavement, with extensive beds of fine branching calcareous algae (Halimeda/Amphiroa-type), encrusting orange and yellow sponges, and scattered branching hard coral (e.g., Image 12, Image 32, Image 40, Image 44, Image 45).
Corals were shot at polyp level with tentacles fully extended for night feeding — branching Acropora, columnar Porites/Montipora, and a colony of large flower-like polyps consistent with Goniopora or Galaxea (e.g., Image 6, Image 10, Image 11, Image 16, Image 25, Image 29, Image 36, Image 46).
Coral cover
- Coral cover has not been estimated for this site: this was a night dive, and night frames are not scored for cover.
Stressors
A bottle- or can-shaped object, crusted with pink coralline and red growth, lies on the algal bed beside a walking shark (e.g., Image 38).
Fish and other fauna
The dive is dominated by walking sharks. Hemiscyllium — most likely the local endemic H. halmahera — appears in roughly a quarter of all frames (10 of 42), foraging across rubble and repeatedly resting on and moving through the calcareous algal beds (e.g., Image 4, Image 7, Image 18, Image 20, Image 23, Image 31, Image 34, Image 37, Image 38).
At least two individuals were photographed. The other subjects, in order of frame count: a camouflaged octopus (6 frames, eye and arms resolved once it shifted position), a large Spanish dancer (5 frames, mantle margins and gill plume), a Phyllidia nudibranch (pale blue-white ground, black bands, yellow-tipped tubercles), a pale speckled sea slug with a dark mantle margin grazing a bed of green filamentous algae (sacoglossan, Elysia/Plakobranchus-type, or a Chelidonura), and an olive-and-cream polyclad flatworm on open sand (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 5, Image 15, Image 17, Image 19, Image 21, Image 22, Image 24, Image 26, Image 30, Image 35, Image 39).
Comparisons with other data
Ahmad et al. (2020) surveyed this site (Falajawa). Coral cover was not estimated on this night dive.
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.
References
- Ahmad A, Fahrudin A, Boer M, Kamal MM, Wardiatno Y (2020). The distribution of reef fish in Ternate Island, North Maluku, Indonesia. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 584:012070. DOI