Maldives - Dhega Thila

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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)

2017-05-25

Coordinates

3.7923, 72.7384

Coral cover

20%

Claude computer vision (45 edited photos) · other methods below · median 17%

Observations

recent mortality

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

50 shown on this page

Site summary

Read this summary in:

A pinnacle crown packed edge to edge with staghorn and table corals under a permanent haze of anthias, with macro life including a black-and-blue nudibranch and anemones with swollen pink tips.

Max. depth dived

30.5 m

sample-sheet maximum

Sea surface temp. (satellite)

29.6°C

satellite sea surface temperature (SST) on the survey date (NOAA Coral Reef Watch, Maldives), not an in-water reading; it is the warmest-pixel (90th percentile) reading in the station area and can run 1–1.5°C above the reef

Four independent survey stations are described below; 3 of them are shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site. The other one has no mapped position.

20 of the 50 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.

Photo credit & attribution

Site description

Setting

A pinnacle that seems to have shrugged off the bad years: its crown is a genuine coral garden, staghorn and table colonies packed edge to edge, smothered under a permanent orange blizzard of anthias (e.g., Image 1, Image 3, Image 5, Image 6, Image 7, Image 15, Image 16, Image 18, Image 23).

General benthic features

Crinoid-laden black coral bushes grow on the deep side (e.g., Image 2, Image 8).

Coral cover

Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
Coral cover: 20% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 45 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

One branching colony is half white, that half recently dead (unspecified recent mortality) (e.g., Image 35, Image 47).

No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores were evident.

Fish and other fauna

Silversides pour off the ledges in glittering curtains, bluestripe snapper mass in golden blocks, and batfish drift overhead like kites (e.g., Image 17, Image 19, Image 20).

But the close-ups are the treasure here — anemones filling whole frames with green-tipped tentacles, their neighbors sporting swollen pink tips; giant disc corals like patterned dinner plates; and a showstopper nudibranch striped in black and sky-blue with orange-studded ridges (e.g., Image 10, Image 11, Image 39, Image 25).

Comparisons with other data

We found no other surveys confirmed at this site as of 2026. Within 5 km, four independent stations recorded station-year means of 14–88% hard coral cover between 2006 and 2025; the nearest, Saponari L at Thudufushi, South Ari Atoll (shallow reef flat + crest), 1.58 km away, read 14% in 2018.

CV model comparison

Mean 20%, median 17% across 45 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	25.2
CoralSCOP edited	20.8
Claude (edited photos)	20.0	n = 45 · SE 3.1

The two computer-vision methods agree within 4.4 pp (20.8–25.2%) and read within 5.2 pp of Claude's blind point count (20.0%).

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. 2026	2023–2025	2 stations, 2.82–3.97 km	Records ↓
Reef Check	2006	1 station, 3.76 km	Records ↓
Saponari L	2018	1 station, 1.58 km	Records ↓

Within 5 km, 4 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 6 surveys between 2006 and 2025. Of the 2 stations surveyed in more than one year, 2 declined (by 57 points) between their first and latest surveys. The longest record, Emboodhoo House Reef (Montefalcone et al. 2026, 2.82 km away), went from 84% (best patch) in 2023 to 27% in 2025. Since 2021, station-year means average 29% (range 27–31%; n = 2 station-years from 2 surveys); 2 best-patch values above 70% are left out, as they are not site means. This site's own estimate (20%) sits 6 points above the one survey station up to 2 km away (14%), inside the 7-point method-noise floor (inconclusive); 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), 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. Values above 70% are marked “best patch”: surveys often target the densest coral on a reef, so these may overstate the site as a whole.

Independent survey data near this site
Agency	Site / location	Date	Hard coral cover (%)	Distance	Link
Reef Check	Panettone Reef	2006	36%	3.76 km	—
Saponari L	Thudufushi, South Ari Atoll (shallow reef flat + crest)	~2018 (sampled between November 2018 and March 2019, around 2 years after the 2016 bleaching event)	14%	1.58 km	doi:10.1007/s10750-021-04546-5
Montefalcone et al. 2026	Emboodhoo House Reef	2023–2025	27–84% (2 surveys) best patch	2.82 km	doi:10.1007/s00338-026-02850-x
Montefalcone et al. 2026	Panettone Beyru	2024–2025	31–88% (2 surveys) best patch	3.97 km	doi:10.1007/s00338-026-02850-x

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, Bianchi CN, Morri C, Ahmed H, Pancrazi I (2026). Outcomes of the fourth global coral bleaching (2023–2024) in the Maldives. Coral Reefs. DOI
Saponari L, Dehnert I, Galli P, Montano S (2021). Assessing population collapse of Drupella spp. (Mollusca: Gastropoda) 2 years after a coral bleaching event in the Republic of Maldives. Hydrobiologia 848:2653-2666. PDF