Indonesia - Komodo NP: Padar Island (Padar Kecil)

General benthic features

The photographs are dominated by soft coral. Two wide frames are almost wall-to-wall octocoral: rust and orange tree-like soft corals, olive-green tufted soft corals, cream and lavender convoluted leathery colonies, and rust-red soft-coral trees, running unbroken into blue water with only narrow white sand channels and a tan plating coral for contrast; a blue-and-yellow butterflyfish, a longnose butterflyfish, and a parrotfish are the fish in frame (e.g., Image 4, Image 5).

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This is exactly the belt Anderson logged as nearly all soft coral from 5 to 10 m, blanketing the benthos. One close frame shows hard coral: the dark green branching colony Anderson identified as Pocillopora acuta, its polyps extended, and immediately below it a large orange-brown mushroom coral with a pale margin — one of the hundreds of fungiids found piled at 2-4 m — set among red sponge, magenta crustose coralline algae, and a crinoid (e.g., Image 1).

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One frame is the wreck itself: a hazy view along a heavily fouled hull, uniformly coated in turf and green fouling growth with a dark hold opening, and no coral recruits visible at that scale, consistent with Anderson's note that it carried urn tunicates and barnacles but few recruits (e.g., Image 2).

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Anderson's log adds small coral bommies at 15 m on a mostly sandy bottom, Stylophora pistillata, Plerogyra, Pachyseris, and one Pocillopora acuta; Fungia was the only hard coral common above 5 m, though some Acropora tables were also present.

Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 8.1% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 56 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

The photo review resolved no bleaching or disease lesions; however, a computer-vision point count called 1.1% of coral points bleached (1 of 56 photos). No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores were evident.

Fish and other fauna

One frame is a superbly camouflaged frogfish, pink and olive mottled to match the coralline-encrusted rock it sits on, betrayed only by its mouth line (e.g., Image 3).

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Anderson's log also records a flying gurnard (the second ever) on sand at 14 m with garden eels, a crustose-coralline-coated scorpionfish, larval nudibranchs growing on soft coral, a never-before-seen colonial ascidian, the first pipefish of the trip, a mantis shrimp, tunicates, and damselfish nests.

Comparisons with other data

We found no other surveys confirmed at this site as of 2026. If you would like to share yours, please email us.

Dive record

One dive, 23 January 2019, 14:40, 65 minutes, max 22.3 m by Anderson's log, 26.7°C (dive-computer average), 5-10 m visibility, and weak current, on a site built around a small wrecked fishing boat.