Indonesia - Halmahera: Tanjung Naraka

General benthic features

The deep end is a broad, pale sand-and-rubble apron in dim blue light, with isolated table Acropora plates standing clear of the substrate, scattered massive Porites and green-brown foliose plating bommies (Turbinaria/Pachyseris-type) marking the transition upslope; these are the low-cover frames (e.g., Image 1, Image 6, Image 18, Image 19, Image 21, Image 26).

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A steep section drops away into blue with CCA- and sponge-crusted rock and tabulate Acropora perched on the lip (e.g., Image 29, Image 37).

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The mid-slope and crest carry the coral: bright yellow-green branching Acropora thickets standing over open sand, tabulate plates, digitate Porites cylindrica-type, Pocillopora, Platygyra, and Diploastrea-type massives, foliose Montipora and Turbinaria, and an unusually heavy soft-coral component — mauve, pink, and orange Dendronephthya bushes with tan Sarcophyton and Sinularia leathers — that fills the densest frames (e.g., Image 2, Image 4, Image 9, Image 33, Image 35, Image 3, Image 41, Image 44, Image 46).

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A conspicuous feature of the site is the extent of consolidated coral rubble: several frames show broad aprons of broken, well-settled branching-coral fragments with only sparse small colonies re-establishing across them, and one frame is almost entirely rubble (e.g., Image 5, Image 15, Image 40).

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Coral cover

Coral cover: 30% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 136 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

It is old, colonized damage rather than anything fresh.

Fish and other fauna

Anderson's field note is all about what was in the water column rather than on the bottom: "biggest school of devil rays I've seen, bumphead parrotfish, blacktips." Fish were dense — anthias, chromis, damselfishes, surgeonfish, and moorish idols over the coral, with schooling fish off the headland in the murkier deep frames — but the devil rays, bumphead parrotfish, and blacktips from the dive log are not resolved in the frames examined (e.g., Image 36, Image 43, Image 47, Image 52).

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Comparisons with other data

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

Dive record

A headland dive on 2026-08-12 worked to 24.2 m in the coolest water of the crossing, 24–25°C.