Indonesia - Komodo NP: The Cauldron / Shotgun

General benthic features

Frames from across the gallery read as a transect through the habitats Anderson describes. Two are the acroporid community: one wide frame is a dense pale corymbose Acropora thicket in the foreground with several lavender-gray tabulate plates stacked behind it, mustard finger coral above, and olive soft corals between, at near-continuous cover with anthias threading the branches; the other frames two large Acropora tables, the nearer roughly two meters across and brown, the further mustard-tan, above a patch of bare pale rubble, with pink-brown soft-coral carpets and clean sand in the foreground and fusiliers overhead (e.g., Image 4, Image 5).

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One frame is the scoured, soft-coral-dominated ground: a longfin batfish hanging over a substrate of pale mint-green Sinularia-type heads on dark red encrusting sponge and coralline rock, with a red-and-yellow sponge and a small anemone, in visibly hazy water and with almost no hard coral in view (e.g., Image 3).

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The sand apron shows a whip-tailed ray gliding low over a coarse sand plain dotted with small isolated coral clumps in murky blue-violet light (e.g., Image 2), and the darkly pigmented Pocillopora acuta colony Anderson logged at about 22 m, sitting on the sand and not integrated into the reef matrix, with a small black-and-white damselfish beside it (e.g., Image 1).

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Anderson's log records an ornate ghost pipefish at the very end of the dive; it was photographed (photo not shown).

Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 26% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 62 of Anderson's edited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table. These are computer-vision indices over photographs, not a diver transect, and each averages across acroporid thicket, scoured soft-coral pavement, and open sand.

Stressors

The photo review resolved no bleaching, disease lesions, or predation scars, and nothing man-made appears; however, a computer-vision point count called 0.4% of coral points bleached (1 of 62 photos).

Comparisons with other data

WWF-US and WWF-Indonesia surveyed a nearby station (TNK05), 0.30 km from the pin; we could not confirm that it is the same reef. Within 5 km, one independent station, WWF-US / WWF-Indonesia at TNK05, 0.30 km away, read 67% in 2016.

Dive record

Anderson dived this site in August 2009 and again on 21 January 2019 (15:04, 53 min, max 23.5 m, average 13.1 m, 27.8°C (dive-computer average; the note reads 25.6°C), about 10 m visibility, strong current, and thermoclines).

Other notes

The 2019 dive, on 21 January, was the third dive of the day. A darkly pigmented Pocillopora acuta colony sat at 22 m, not integrated into the reef matrix. Anderson's log also lists small massive poritids, Tubastraea, a high diversity of mostly small Acropora, Pachyseris, Seriatopora caliendrum/Stylophora pistillata, Pocillopora verrucosa, and a very large snapper. Pocillopora eydouxi was rare, barrel sponges were large, and one area had no coral, only CCA-encrusted rubble. A large nurse shark, the first of the trip, was seen in the distance. Montipora and abundant, diverse Acropora were also present.