Indonesia - Halmahera: Sali Bay-Batu Mangga

Setting

Sali Bay-Batu Mangga (Halmahera dive 9) was a strong-current reef-hook drift, and the imagery shows it: a stretch of near-black, near-zero-cover frames reads as a deep, dim, current-swept passage rather than a data gap (e.g., Image 37, Image 40, Image 48).

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General benthic features

Around it, cover is genuinely patchy and colorful. Standout set-pieces include a vivid red brain coral sitting alone on white sand, clusters of pink tube/barrel sponges, and a striking purple-red-yellow soft coral/sponge assemblage on the wall followed later by a magenta gorgonian-and-soft-coral bouquet and orange soft coral fields (e.g., Image 16, Image 21, Image 31, Image 53).

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Extensive pale corymbose and staghorn Acropora thickets, mostly cream to pale gray-brown with normal white growth tips, dominate the mid-dive stretch and account for several of the highest single-frame readings (e.g., Image 3, Image 6, Image 9, Image 11, Image 20, Image 24, Image 27, Image 33, Image 42).

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Large ruffled foliose plate corals recur, and a big smooth green-brown massive colony with a hard, glossy surface appears mid-dive (e.g., Image 7, Image 12, Image 23, Image 26, Image 36, Image 45).

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Coral cover

Coral cover: 29% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 125 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

Condition: no bleaching, disease, crown-of-thorns, or predation was observed in any of the 127 frames reviewed; the pale coloration on the staghorn fields is a normal growth-tip morph, not tissue loss.

Fish and other fauna

The log-noted turtle is clearly resolved, resting on the reef top in open water. Fish life is heavy throughout the second half — dense damsel and anthias clouds hang over the branching fields. The log-noted sharks were not confidently resolved in the surviving imagery, likely because the current-swept, low-visibility passage cost some of the pelagic-encounter frames.

Comparisons with other data

No prior survey data from this site. If you would like to share yours, please email us.

Other notes

Anderson's field note: “strong current dive (used reef hook), sharks, turtle, adventure”