Maldives - Kashidhoo Faru

General benthic features

A reef Anderson's field notes describe as having "very high coral cover and diversity" — a rolling slope smothered in coral, where giant rosettes of thin, whorled plates stack like heads of ancient roses beside dense staghorn thickets with lilac-blue branch tips (e.g., Image 6, Image 18, Image 23, Image 24).

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A vivid yellow-green table coral crowns one rise, and deeper down the reef turns into a waving green meadow of long-polyped colonies (e.g., Image 37).

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Coral cover

• Coral cover: 27% (SD 20%, n=13 transects, median 20%) in July 2016 — Coral Reef CPR point-intercept transects on Kashidhoo Faru, after the 2016 bleaching; we were part of the CPR team.
• The April 2016 survey, during the bleaching, read 74% (n=10 transects). 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

In January 2016 Anderson's sample sheet already noted "some partial mortality" on three of the large branching colonies sampled (one also with "some new mortality") and "some paler sections" on another sampled colony. The frames from that dive also show stark-white sections on branching colonies, recent mortality, cause not stated (e.g., Image 46).

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Months later, the 2016 El Niño bleached the vast majority of corals on Baa's reefs. No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores were evident.

Fish and other fauna

Clouds of slender silver fish stream over the thickets (e.g., Image 17), damselfish hold territories among the plates, and a scarlet feather star hides in the branches.

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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.

Other notes

Look for the field marks of working science: numbered tags zip-tied to corals, a ruler laid against each tagged colony (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 14), and a researcher's wrist computer reading 13.2 meters.

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