Indonesia - Komodo NP: Police Corner

Setting

The dive went on to 30 m along a near-vertical wall. 20 m viz at beginning of dive, 25°C, cold, and dark. Swam through a series of cool overhangs. Very little relief, likely due to high currents most of the time (e.g., Image 3).

3

Went with current back into coral-dominated area.

General benthic features

The descent landed on dense coral. Fluorescent green Seriatopora caliendrum. Less hard corals at depth. Some large, coral-encrusted boulders at 30 m. Some Seriatopora hystrix and Pocillopora verrucosa @ 30 m. Tubastraea. Many unknown plating species. Some Acropora. Plentiful CCA at depth. Stylophora pistillata. Nearly all encrusting species. One species of encrusting sponge also very common. At 15 m, more soft corals and hydroids, and many unidentified encrusting species, one of which looked like Isopora, a genus that can form encrusting colonies. At least 10-15 encrusting species @ 15 m (e.g., Image 2).

2

Seriatopora caliendrum, brain corals, Stylophora pistillata, 40-50% coral cover at 11-13 m. Very high coral diversity @ 10 m (e.g., Image 1).

1

Fire coral, Hydnophora, some Acropora. Slightly more relief at 9 m, at which point Acropora became more common. Nearly all Stylophora pistillata were green fluorescent. Galaxea relatively common at all depths (small colonies). Mix of hard and soft corals in shallows (very beautiful; got some great photos) (e.g., Image 4, Image 5).

45

Some small massive poritids in shallows, Montipora, some finger Porites. Amazing corals at 5-9 m. Platygyra, Plerogyra, P. rus, leaf scorpionfish.

Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 22% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 78 of Anderson's edited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table. Coral cover 5.0-10% at 25 m.
• Coral cover @ 20 m was much more impressive.
• Coral cover @ 20 m: 30-40%.
• At 5-9 m: 50-60% cover and high diversity; the reef fish community eventually became more impressive but still showed signs of overfishing.

Stressors

A thin white wire coral looping out from the deep wall shows possible bleaching (one frame, Image 13); a second wire coral just below it is still pigmented.

13

One large pink plating colony has a band of recently dead, bare white skeleton along its lower margin, with a sharp edge against the living tissue; the cause is not known (e.g., Image 39).

39

A large massive Porites dome on the shallow terrace carries dozens of small white flecks of bare skeleton scattered over its upper surface, a pattern most consistent with parrotfish bite marks, although small lesions or sediment scour cannot be excluded from the one frame (e.g., Image 9).

9

Fish and other fauna

Fish life unimpressive, though several nice angelfish. Finally began to see schooling fish. Snapper, batfish, encrusting Porites, Pachyseris, stinging hydroids (all over the place), Pocillopora acuta (uncommon). Few big fish with the exception of a small barracuda and some batfish.

Comparisons with other data

We found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. Within 5 km, seven independent stations (Reef Check and WWF-US / WWF-Indonesia) recorded station-year means of 8.8–55% hard coral cover between 2014 and 2020; the nearest, WWF-US / WWF-Indonesia at TNK06, 2.38 km away, read 40% in 2016.

Dive record

2019-1-25 dive 1: Police corner (trip dive 24). 7:33-8:35 (62 min). Max. depth=32.6 m. Average water temperature 26.5°C. 30% oxygen.