Indonesia - Halmahera: Tower Corner
Part of the regional summaries: Indonesia - Halmahera and Indonesia - Maluku
More info
North Maluku (NOAA CRW virtual station)Tower Corner gets steadily better with depth, exactly as Anderson's log notes - amazing corals from 2-7 m - where near-continuous staghorn and corymbose Acropora thickets and tabulate plates cantilever over the drop-off, above a deeper, current-scoured wall of sparse coral recruits on coralline rock. A blind Claude computer-vision point count puts coral cover around 34%.
Tower Corner justru semakin baik pada kedalaman yang lebih dangkal, persis seperti catatan Anderson — karang yang menakjubkan pada 2-7 m — tempat rumpun Acropora bercabang dan korimbosa yang hampir menyambung serta karang meja tabulat menjorok di atas tubir, di atas dinding yang lebih dalam dan tergerus arus dengan sedikit rekrut karang di atas batuan koralin. Penghitungan titik buta visi komputer Claude memperkirakan tutupan karang sekitar 34%.
Terjemahan ringkasan ini oleh AI; versi bahasa Inggris yang berlaku.
Eight other CRD dive sites within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.
39 of these 55 photographs are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
A current-exposed corner dive on 2026-08-11 worked to 28.7 m at 25–26°C, with the reef getting steadily better the shallower it goes. Anderson's field note is unambiguous about where the dive peaked: "very strong currents at depth, used hook, amazing corals from 2–7 m."
General benthic features
The deep, scoured faces are the low end of that range: bare rock plastered in pink and red crustose coralline algae with blue, violet, and scarlet encrusting sponges, carrying only scattered thumbnail-sized cream coral recruits (e.g., Image 13, Image 28, Image 32, Image 48).
The mid-slope (roughly 15–25 m) is a mixed garden — brown arborescent and leathery soft corals, gray and blue-gray massive Porites, laminar Turbinaria- and Echinophyllia-type plates set on white sand-and-rubble aprons, purple Sarcophyton and Sinularia leathers, gray sea fans and wire coral off the lip, and one broad whorled foliose colony (Turbinaria/Merulina-type) close to a meter across (e.g., Image 7, Image 10, Image 11, Image 14, Image 24, Image 26, Image 27, Image 29, Image 37, Image 46, Image 53).
The 2–7 m crest is the site's signature and matches the field note exactly: near-continuous pink, mauve, and olive staghorn and corymbose Acropora thickets running frame to frame, with tabulate Acropora plates cantilevered over the drop-off, digitate Porites cylindrica-type stands, Pocillopora, Seriatopora, Platygyra brains, and shingled foliose plating packed in between (e.g., Image 1, Image 5, Image 6, Image 8, Image 9, Image 12, Image 16, Image 17, Image 18, Image 19, Image 20, Image 21, Image 31, Image 35, Image 36, Image 38, Image 39, Image 41, Image 42, Image 43, Image 50, Image 55).
Coral cover
Coral cover: 34% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 242 of Anderson's unedited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.
Fish and other fauna
Fish are dense throughout: clouds of anthias and chromis over every coral-covered surface, fusiliers off the wall, an anemonefish on the crest, and crinoids on the exposed rock (e.g., Image 3, Image 15).
Comparisons with other data
No prior survey data from this site. If you would like to share yours, please email us.
CV model comparison
More info
DINOv3 and CoralSCOP were run on the same photos and are listed for comparison. Coralscapes v2 and v1 were also run but are not shown: Anderson does not consider Coralscapes reliable for these photos. No diver transect exists for this trip, so agreement between the rows is not accuracy, and as of September 2026 no computer-vision method estimates coral cover accurately on new images; treat every row as indicative.| Method | Hard-coral cover (%) |
|---|---|
| In-house DINOv3 | 35.4 |
| CoralSCOP unedited | 34.4 |
| Claude | 34.0 |
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data are from Coral Reef Diagnostics.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.