Indonesia - Halmahera S (Bacan strait)

Setting

This site sits at -0.550, 127.580 in the Patinti Strait, the channel between Bacan Island and southern Halmahera in North Maluku. The one thing that can be said with confidence about the setting is that a narrow strait of this kind carries strong tidal exchange between the Molucca Sea and the Halmahera Sea; the fauna and habitat details previously attached to this site came from dive-operator webpages rather than from any survey or from Anderson's own record and are not repeated here.

Coral cover

No coral-cover value exists for this site and no independent survey falls within 10 km, so there is no measured figure from any source. Coral cover: no figure is published for this site. Nothing on the map attaches a coral-cover measurement to this site — the account above is descriptive background, not a survey result. A value will be added if transect data, an independent survey nearby, or a computer vision pass on Anderson's own photographs becomes available.

Stressors

Heat stress: five-year mean annual maximum of 5.1 degree-heating weeks (map satellite layer), the lowest of any Indonesian area in this set. No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores evident.

Comparisons with other data

Also on record for this site: Strong tidal flow feeds shallow coral plateaus that slope into deeper walls, dominated by hard corals alongside sea fans, sponges, and orange soft-coral bommies packed with anthias. The strait is known for reef sharks (blacktip, whitetip, gray reef), tuna, barracuda, and napoleon wrasse, plus muck-diving critters such as ghost pipefish and epaulette ("walking") sharks in its sheltered bays.