Maldives - Veli
Part of the regional summaries: Maldives - Central (Male Atolls / Ari / Vaavu) and Maldives
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Maldives (NOAA CRW virtual station) · Maldives ecoregion mean=2.9°C-heating weeksVeli is table-coral country: a gently shelving terrace where plate-shaped Acropora stack in tiers from saucer-sized juveniles to meter-wide slabs, with clouds of anthias and a river of bluestripe snapper pouring over the reef. By April 2016 the neighboring Veli Channel reef had nearly half its corals bleached, while sheltered Veli Lagoon escaped almost untouched.
Four independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
Eleven other CRD dive sites within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.
20 of these 39 photographs are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
General benthic features
Table-coral country: a gently shelving terrace off Veli where plate-shaped Acropora stack in tiers like café tables, from saucer-sized juveniles to slabs a meter across, with cauliflower Pocillopora and massive Porites mounds filling the gaps (e.g., Image 4, Image 7, Image 15, Image 20, Image 21, Image 25).
Coral cover
Coral cover: 35% — photo-derived, and the two methods differ by 7.8 pp (31% vs 39%). This site's figure is the mean of two independent computer vision passes over Anderson's own frames: a DINOv3 calibrated point classifier reads 30.8% and a CoralSCOP computer vision reads 38.6%, a spread of 7.8 percentage points. The map publishes the mean so sites can be sorted against one another, but the honest statement of what is known here is the 31–39% range: the two products have different denominators and should not be treated as one measurement.
Stressors
A few white branch tips, and one ghost-white staghorn, hinted at the heat to come (e.g., Image 22); by April 2016 the neighboring Veli Channel reef had nearly half its corals bleached, while the sheltered Veli Lagoon reef, remarkably, escaped almost untouched.
No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores evident.
Fish and other fauna
Clouds of orange anthias shimmer over the coral, and the signature spectacle is a river of yellow — a dense school of bluestripe snapper pouring across the reef in formation.
Comparisons with other data
No independent survey was made at this exact site; the nearest ones are listed in the table below.
Dive record
The January 2016 research dive threaded transect tape between them, tagging round, shag-pile table colonies photographed from above with little white number plates (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, Image 5, Image 8, Image 9, Image 11, Image 13, Image 14, Image 16, Image 18, Image 23, Image 24).
CV model comparison
More info
As of September 2026 no computer-vision method estimates coral cover accurately on new images, so treat this as indicative rather than a measurement; it is revised as the methods improve.More info
The published figure is the mean of the two methods.| Method | Hard-coral cover (%) |
|---|---|
| In-house DINOv3 | 30.8 |
| CoralSCOP | 38.6 |
| Mean (± SD) | 34.7 ± 5.5 |
| Range | 30.8–38.6 |
Mean ± SD and range are across the computer-vision methods shown.
Independent surveys nearby
| Agency / program | Year(s) | Stations / distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Montefalcone et al. (2020) | 2015 | 1 station, 2.14 km | Records ↓ |
| Reef Check | 2022 | 1 station, 3.48 km | Records ↓ |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | 2015–2017 | 2 stations, 1.98–2.69 km | Records ↓ |
Dr. Coral (CRD)Year-average (no detectable trend)Within 5 km, 4 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 5 records between 2015 and 2022. Of the 1 station surveyed in more than one year, 1 changed by less than 5 percentage points between their first and latest surveys. The longest record, transect 37035 (XL Catlin Seaview Survey, 1.98 km away), went from 7.1% in 2015 to 5.5% in 2017. One survey since 2021 recorded 19%. This site's own estimate (35%) sits 15.3 points above the recent value (19%); 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 range is shown. Station names are not dive-site names. Values marked best patch exceed 70%: surveyors usually chose the richest area, so they are not site means.
| Agency | Site / location | Date | Hard coral cover (%) | Distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | transect 37035 | 2015–2017 | 5.5–7.1% (2 images) | 1.98 km | — |
| Montefalcone et al. (2020) | Cocoa Corner | 2015 | 76% best patch | 2.14 km | HeatCRD database |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | transect 37036 | 2015 | 38% | 2.69 km | — |
| Reef Check | Gulhi Island Backreef | 2022 | 19% | 3.48 km | — |
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data are from Coral Reef Diagnostics and the organizations named in the data-sources table above.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.