Indonesia - Komodo NP: Makassar Reef / Manta Point
Part of the regional summary: Indonesia - Komodo
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East Nusa Tenggara (NOAA CRW virtual station)Komodo's famous manta cleaning station is a shallow, gently domed plain of turf-covered rubble with almost no hard coral, where mantas appeared in most of the photographs, up to three at once and several feeding. A bommie ridge breaks the plain with 30-50% live coral, and no bleaching, disease, or crown-of-thorns were seen.
Stasiun pembersihan manta Komodo yang terkenal adalah dataran dangkal yang sedikit menggembung, berupa pecahan karang tertutup turf dengan hampir tanpa karang keras, tempat manta muncul di sebagian besar foto, hingga tiga ekor sekaligus dan beberapa sedang makan. Punggung bommie memecah dataran itu dengan 30-50% karang hidup, dan tidak terlihat pemutihan, penyakit, atau bintang laut mahkota duri.
Terjemahan ringkasan ini oleh AI; versi bahasa Inggris yang berlaku.
Four independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
Six other CRD dive sites with their own pages within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.
5 of the 47 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
General benthic features
The manta cleaning station (48 of 67 frames, and the whole dive from 11:18 on) is a shallow, gently domed plain of algal-turf-covered rubble and pavement with almost no hard coral (e.g., Image 1, Image 4).
A bommie ridge (17 frames, 11:03–11:13 and 11:22) breaks that plain at 30–50% live cover: corymbose and digitate Acropora, mint-green long-polyp corals, massive heads, cream leather corals, gorgonian fans, and dense crinoids; a frame-filling Acropora thicket at 11:40 is 70–90% live coral (e.g., Image 3).
Coral cover
- Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
- Coral cover: 3.3% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 59 of Anderson's edited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.
Stressors
No bleaching, disease, COTS, or predation is visible: one white object is a lobed sponge, and the pale colonies in two other frames are naturally cream leathers.
Fish and other fauna
Mantas appear in 45 frames, up to three at once and several feeding with cephalic fins unfurled; also a green turtle and a six-banded angelfish (e.g., Image 2, Image 5).
Comparisons with other data
Fox et al. (2005) surveyed this site (Karang Makassar). Cover values from that work are not among the survey records shown on this page. Within 5 km, four independent stations (Reef Check and WWF-US / WWF-Indonesia) recorded station-year means of 47–59% hard coral cover between 2016 and 2020; the nearest, WWF-US / WWF-Indonesia at TNK08, 2.45 km away, read 59% in 2016.
Dive record
Makassar Reef (Manta Point), 10:53–11:56 on 2019-01-22, max 9.4 m at 26.7°C (dive-computer average) on 30% nitrox. The photographs match Anderson's log: little coral, about 20 mantas, a turtle.
CV model comparison
More info
A few colony-focused photos raise the mean; the median is the typical photo. No computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images, so treat this as indicative rather than a measurement; it is revised as the methods improve.More info
DINOv3 and CoralSCOP were run on the site's photographs (see each row's n) and are listed for comparison. No diver transect exists for this trip, so agreement between the rows is not accuracy, and no computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images; treat every row as indicative.| Method | Hard coral cover (%) | Photos (n) ± SE |
|---|---|---|
| In-house DINOv3 | 10.1 | n = 59 · SE 0.7 |
| CoralSCOP edited | 9.1 | n = 57 · SE 1.1 |
| Claude (edited photos) | 3.3 | n = 59 · SE 0.9 |
The two computer-vision methods agree within 1.0 pp (9.1–10.1%) and read within 6.8 pp of Claude's blind point count (3.3%).
See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.
Independent surveys nearby
| Agency / program | Year(s) | Stations / distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reef Check | 2020 | 3 stations, 4.33–4.95 km | Records ↓ |
| WWF-US / WWF-Indonesia | 2016 | 1 station, 2.45 km | Records ↓ |
Coral Reef DiagnosticsYear-average (illustrative only, programs differ)Within 5 km, 4 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 7 surveys between 2016 and 2020. The most recent nearby survey is from 2020, so these values predate recent heat stress. This site's own estimate (3.3%) is not compared with these surveys: none lies within 2 km.
Collected by other programs using different methods (Reef Check uses point-intercept transects), so these are context for the figures above, not a like-for-like comparison. Where a station was surveyed more than once, the cell shows either the range of its values or, as a single value, the mean of surveys made in one year. Station names are not dive-site names.
| Agency | Site / location | Date | Hard coral cover (%) | Distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WWF-US / WWF-Indonesia | TNK08 | 2016 | 59% | 2.45 km | Amkieltiela, Abdillah T, Amkieltiela A, Andradi-Brown D, Lazuardi E. 2016. Komodo MPA. MERMAID |
| Reef Check | Pengah Kecil (Sector 1) SW Side | 2020 | 48% (2 surveys) | 4.33 km | — |
| Reef Check | Siaba Besar (Sector 1) | 2020 | 51% (2 surveys) | 4.95 km | — |
| Reef Check | Siaba Besar (Sector 2) | 2020 | 47% (2 surveys) | 4.95 km | — |
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data are from Coral Reef Diagnostics and the organizations named in the data sources above.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.
References
- Fox HE, Mous PJ, Pet JS, Muljadi AH, Caldwell RL (2005). Experimental assessment of coral reef rehabilitation following blast fishing. Conservation Biology 19:98-107. DOI