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 pockets dense with sponges (e.g., Image 34, Image 35).

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Plating and laminar corals form the shingled backbone (the log notes some Montipora and more foliaceous and sheeting corals at 15-20 m), with fleshy meandroid colonies 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 domes (Anderson's log: small massive Porites), brain corals (the log: Platygyra), 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

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• 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. Anderson's log estimated live coral cover by eye at 5.0-10% at 5 m, about 20% at 15 m, and 5.0-15% at 20 m, with no coral at 30 m.

Stressors

One crown-of-thorns starfish was photographed draped over a coral, with a stark, freshly exposed white patch on the colony beneath it (e.g., Image 6); Anderson's log also records one crown-of-thorns eating a coral.

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A bright white patch on one large brown plate, its bare center grading through a pale halo into brown tissue, is possible recent mortality, cause not stated (one frame, Image 50); a few plate margins carry pale patches of unresolved cause. One long-polyp colony is partly bleached: a stark-white patch with its polyps still extended sits beside the colony's brown tissue (e.g., Image 25).

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There was no macroalgal overgrowth and no rubble field.

Comparisons with other data

We found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. Within 5 km, four WCS Indonesia via MERMAID stations recorded station-year means of 19–26% hard coral cover in 2020; the nearest, WCS Indonesia via MERMAID at Bubble Reef (Deep), 1.25 km away, read 26% in 2020.

Dive record

The dive log records 20 January 2019, entry 11:21, a maximum depth of 32.3 m and 27.6°C (dive-computer average); the dive sat between two Hot Rocks dives at Sangeang.