Indonesia - Komodo NP: Deep Purple

Setting

Deep Purple was dived on 20 January 2019 from a Komodo National Park liveaboard: a deeper, lower-light mixed slope rather than a shallow thicket reef (e.g., Image 29).

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Visibility was soft and hazy with a green cast, the substrate carries a visible silt load and extended crinoids and soft corals indicate current (e.g., Image 4, Image 9).

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General benthic features

Broad purple, lavender, and tan plate terraces step down moderate relief, broken by massive domes and sponge-rich pockets (e.g., Image 34, Image 35).

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Plating and laminar Montipora-type corals form the shingled backbone, with fleshy meandroid colonies compatible with Lobophyllia or Symphyllia forming near-monospecific lavender beds; Anderson also photographed a large pale-gray Diploastrea dome (e.g., Image 1, Image 8, Image 20, Image 26, Image 28).

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Massive Porites-type domes, Favites- and Platygyra-type brains, tabulate and corymbose Acropora, barrel and encrusting sponges, salmon-pink soft corals, and very high crinoid density round out the reef, and a cryptic octopus was wedged into a crevice (e.g., Image 15, Image 23, Image 30, Image 50, Image 53, Image 55).

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Coral cover

Coral cover: 26% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 60 of Anderson's edited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table. Cover is meaningful here: the terraces approach continuous living tissue, and imagery suggests roughly 40-60% live hard coral, though haze softens several wide frames and the crown-of-thorns keep that number moving (e.g., Image 37, Image 41).

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Stressors

The headline observation is crown-of-thorns: at least two individuals were imaged, with a probable third hosting a commensal shrimp (e.g., Image 6).

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A bright white lesion on one large tan plate has feeding-scar morphology, though disease or mechanical mortality cannot be excluded, and a few plate margins carry pale patches of unresolved cause (e.g., Image 47).

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There was no thermal-bleaching signature, no macroalgal overgrowth, and no rubble field.

Comparisons with other data

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

Dive record

The dive log records 20 January 2019, entry 11:21, a maximum depth of 32.3 m and 27.59 C - the deepest of the three dives that day, sitting between two Hot Rocks dives at Sangeang.