Maldives - Gaagandufaruhuraa

Setting

A shallow reef terrace off a little snorkel island in Baa Atoll, where a rubble-strewn flat tips suddenly over a steep slope into deep blue water (e.g., Image 23).

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General benthic features

The stars are cauliflower-shaped pocilloporid corals — some tan, some a striking dark olive-green — alongside stubby-fingered staghorn relatives, lobed boulder corals, and a maze-patterned brain coral, with soft leather corals sprawled near the measuring ruler (e.g., Image 5, Image 11, Image 16, Image 22).

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Macro frames dive right down to the polyps, tentacles out and feeding (e.g., Image 2, Image 7).

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Coral cover

• Coral cover: 38% (SD 9.9%, n=17 transects, median 38%) in July 2016 — Coral Reef CPR point-intercept transects recorded under two reef names, Gaagan’dufaruhuraa (9 transects) and Gaagandu Faru (8), after the 2016 bleaching; we were part of the CPR team.
• The April 2016 survey, during the bleaching, read 61% (n=13 transects: 5 and 8 under the same two names). A single computer vision estimate (CoralSCOP mask-sum) over 19 of Anderson's January 2016 photographs is listed in the method table for comparison only; mask-sum tends to read high where colonies overlap or fill the frame.

Stressors

Months later the 2016 El Niño bleached the vast majority of corals on Baa's reefs, making these photos a portrait of the reef in its final healthy season. No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores were evident.

Comparisons with other data

Apart from the Coral Reef CPR surveys shown here, we found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. If you would like to share yours, please email us.

Dive record

This was a working research site: look closely at the wide shots and you'll spot numbered plastic tags zip-tied to individual corals, each colony measured against a steel ruler as part of a January 2016 monitoring baseline (e.g., Image 1, Image 13).

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