Maldives - Back Faru

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Part of the regional summaries: Maldives - Central (Male Atolls / Ari / Vaavu) and Maldives

Photo: Anderson Mayfield/Coral Reef Diagnostics

Country

Maldives

Survey date(s)

2017-05-14
2017-05-21

Coordinates

4.2397, 73.5544

Coral cover

6.4%

Claude computer vision (74 edited photos) · other methods below · median 0.0%

Observations

crown-of-thorns bleachingpredation

Heat stress

Most recent heat load record

30.1°C 0.0°C-weeks

26 Oct 2026 · Bleaching Watch

5-year thermal stress load

5-year mean max. degree heating weeks (DHW)

2.2°C-weeksⁱ

2021–2025

NOAA Coral Reef Watch — Maldives virtual station

i 5-year mean max. DHW is the mean of the annual maximum DHWs over the five complete years named above, not conditions today.

More info

Maldives (NOAA CRW virtual station)

Photographs

25 shown on this page; 74 analyzed

Site summary

Read this summary in:

A reef caught mid-recovery a year after 2016 bleaching: coralline-algae-capped dead framework and lingering crown-of-thorns scars alongside actively recruiting cauliflower corals and surviving dome corals.

Max. depth dived

31 m

sample-sheet maximum

Water temp. during survey

29.0°Cⁱⁱ

+0.0°C vs the 2017 mean sea temperature (29.0°C)

ii Average site temperature in Anderson's 2017 Maldives samples sheet for both Back Faru dives on 14 May 2017 (29°C, recorded to the whole degree); the sheet gives no temperature for the 21 May dive

Six independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.

Two other CRD dive sites with their own pages within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.

12 of the 25 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.

Photo credit & attribution

Site description

General benthic features

Look closer and knee-high cauliflower-shaped branching corals are recruiting everywhere across the rubble (e.g., Image 8), massive dome corals (e.g., Image 18) soldier on, and the fish never left.

Coral cover

Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
Coral cover: 6.4% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 74 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

A year after the 2016 bleaching, whole terraces of dead framework here have been shrink-wrapped in pink crustose coralline algae (e.g., Image 1, Image 3) — nature's primer coat — with dead table corals still standing like abandoned furniture (e.g., Image 12) and crown-of-thorns seastars (plus their fresh feeding scars) hiding in the wreckage.

During a crown-of-thorns removal survey in May 2017, divers from Coral Reef CPR and Carpe Diem Maldives removed 93 crown-of-thorns starfish from this reef (Coral Reef CPR 2017). Red cyanobacterial mats sheet some of the dead tables (e.g., Image 21), and cushion stars, Culcita by Anderson's own identification, graze the framework (e.g., Image 2, Image 3).

Fish and other fauna

Dense black schools boil over the slope (e.g., Image 16), a titan-type triggerfish patrols the rubble (e.g., Image 9), morays — including a gape-jawed honeycomb moray — thread the crevices (e.g., Image 23, Image 25), and the macro hunt turns up a banded boxer shrimp (e.g., Image 20), Clark's-type anemonefish in a red-lipped anemone, and a giant clam flashing a blue-violet mantle.

Comparisons with other data

Montefalcone et al. (2020) surveyed this site (Farukolhufushi Back Faru) in 1999, 0.04 km from the pin. Cover values from that work are not among the survey records shown on this page. Within 5 km, six independent stations recorded station-year means of 1.8–41% hard coral cover between 2010 and 2019; the nearest of these, Montefalcone et al. (2020) at Hulumale Beyru, 0.62 km away, read 15–41% between 2015 and 2016.

Dive record

Dived three times across the trip, Back Faru reads like a field report on how a Maldivian reef rebuilds.

CV model comparison

Mean 6.4%, median 0.0% across 74 photos.

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.

Headline: Claude computer vision, a blind point count of this site's own photographs.

More info

Other rows are for comparison only and are never averaged. No diver transect exists for these photos, so agreement between rows is not accuracy.

Method	Hard coral cover (%)	Photos (n) ± SE
In-house DINOv3	13.9
CoralSCOP edited	14.6
Claude (edited photos)	6.4	n = 74 · SE 1.1

The two computer-vision methods agree within 0.7 pp (13.9–14.6%) and read 7.5–8.2 pp above Claude's blind point count (6.4%); the headline is Claude's blind point count because no transect or manual count exists here.

See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.

Independent surveys nearby

Data availability near this site
Agency / program	Year(s)	Stations / distance	Link
Montefalcone et al. (2020)	2015–2019	2 stations, 0.62–2.91 km	Records ↓
Reef Check	2010–2019	3 stations, 1.15–2.54 km	Records ↓
XL Catlin Seaview Survey	2015–2017	1 station, 2.81 km	Records ↓

Within 5 km, 6 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 12 records between 2010 and 2019. Of the 3 stations surveyed in more than one year, 2 were scored by divers or by people annotating photographs: 2 declined (by 21–26 points) between their first and latest surveys. The other 1 was scored by automated image analysis: declined by 12 points, more than the 7-point method-noise floor. The longest record, Banana Reef (Montefalcone et al. 2020, 2.91 km away), went from 40% in 2015 to 19% in 2019. The most recent nearby survey is from 2019, so these values predate recent heat stress. This site's own estimate (6.4%) sits 8.6 points below the range of these station-year means up to 2 km away (15–41%); the methods differ, so the comparison is context, not a like-for-like test.

Collected by other programs using different methods (Reef Check uses point-intercept transects; the XL Catlin Seaview Survey uses photo-transects with automated image annotation), 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.

Independent survey data near this site
Agency	Site / location	Date	Hard coral cover (%)	Distance	Link
Reef Check	Banana Reef	2010	33%	1.15 km	—
Reef Check	Banana Reef	2014	16%	2.54 km	—
Montefalcone et al. (2020)	Hulumale Beyru	2015–2016	15–41% (range of yearly means; 2 records)	0.62 km	doi:10.3389/fmars.2020.00587
XL Catlin Seaview Survey	transect 37001	2015–2017	1.8–14% (2 surveys)	2.81 km	doi:10.14264/uql.2019.930
Montefalcone et al. (2020)	Banana Reef	2015–2019	12–40% (range of yearly means; 4 records)	2.91 km	doi:10.3389/fmars.2020.00587
Reef Check	Kuda Banana Reef	2019	7.2%, mean of 2 surveys (5 m and 10 m)	2.52 km	—

Data & links

All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data are from Coral Reef Diagnostics and the organizations named in the data sources above.

References

Montefalcone M, Morri C, Bianchi CN (2020). Influence of Local Pressures on Maldivian Coral Reef Resilience Following Repeated Bleaching Events, and Recovery Perspectives. Frontiers in Marine Science 7:587. PDF
Coral Reef CPR & Carpe Diem Maldives Pvt. Ltd. (2017). Crown-of-thorns starfish removal report, North and South Malé Atolls, 13-20 May 2017. PDF
Gonzalez-Rivero M, et al. (2019). Seaview Survey photo-quadrat and image classification dataset. The University of Queensland (UQ eSpace) data collection. DOI