Mauritius - Bamboo

Setting

Bamboo's reef structure combines a low-relief base of sand-veneered rubble and pavement with sections of steep, near-vertical wall dropping into open blue water (e.g., Image 1, Image 8, Image 9).

189

General benthic features

Coral cover was patchy and scattered, with live colonies interspersed among bare, turf- and coralline-algae-covered rock and rubble (e.g., Image 17).

17

Massive Porites colonies were the most frequently encountered growth form, accompanied by foliose or plating corals compatible with Montipora or Pachyseris, scattered branching Acropora, massive brain coral forms consistent with Platygyra and Dipsastraea/Favites, and at least one free-living, elongate fungiid compatible with Herpolitha or Polyphyllia (e.g., Image 3, Image 5, Image 7, Image 12, Image 15, Image 16, Image 19).

35712151619

Non-coral life was conspicuous: red, orange, and pink encrusting sponges colored patches of bare rock, and dense clusters of long-spined, black Diadema-type sea urchins occupied open pavement, consistent with a heavily grazed bottom (e.g., Image 4, Image 6, Image 18).

4618

Coral cover

Coral cover: 17% — the site cover estimate from Anderson Mayfield's Mauritius manuscript (his manual point count and CoralNet, weighted equally); the manual point count alone is 17%. The earlier four-method average for this site was 16.4%; every method is compared in the table below. The methods have different denominators and sampling footprints, so this is a provisional photo-derived index rather than a diver survey, and the agreement between the four is the real measure of confidence at this site. Anderson keeps an eye out for newer CV models and will refresh this CoralSCOP and DINOv3 figure once a more trustworthy option is available.

Stressors

No widespread bleaching was evident across the reef as a whole. No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores evident.

Fish and other fauna

Fish observed included damselfishes, butterflyfishes, a cleaner-wrasse pair, a schooling snapper/fusilier-type group, a pair of black-and-white bannerfish (Heniochus), a moray eel, a scorpionfish, a resting stingray, and a pipefish (e.g., Image 10).

10

Comparisons with other data

No independent survey was made at this exact site; the nearest ones are listed in the table below.