Mauritius - Reef Garden
Part of the regional summary: Mauritius
More info
Southern Mauritius (NOAA CRW virtual station)A low-relief Mauritius patch reef of coral bommies and rubble mounds rising from white sand, with the highest hand-scored coral cover of the seven Mauritius sites. Porites, brain corals, and staghorn anchor the bommies, joined by garden eels, two lionfish, and dense snapper and anthias schools, with no widespread bleaching; the pin's exact position is approximate.
Un récif de patch à faible relief formé de patates coralliennes et de monticules de débris s'élevant d'un sable blanc, avec la couverture corallienne la plus élevée des sept sites mauriciens relevés à la main. Des Porites, des coraux-cerveaux et des acropores branchus structurent les patates, accompagnés d'anguilles-jardinières, de deux rascasses volantes et de bancs denses de lutjans et d'anthias ; aucun blanchissement généralisé. La position exacte du point est approximative.
Traduction par IA de ce résumé ; la version anglaise fait foi.
Three independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
One other CRD dive site within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.
18 of these 20 photographs are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
Reef Garden is a low-relief patch-reef system: coral bommies and consolidated rubble mounds rising from a white sand flat, with manually scored point-count cover of 26% hard coral, the highest of the seven Mauritius sites (e.g., Image 10, Image 11, Image 13, Image 16).
General benthic features
Massive Porites, Platygyra/Favites-type brain corals, and branching and staghorn Acropora anchor the bommies, joined by soft-coral clusters, garden eels, two lionfish, and dense snapper- and anthias-type schools; no widespread bleaching was evident (e.g., Image 1, Image 3, Image 4, Image 5, Image 6, Image 7, Image 9, Image 12, Image 14, Image 15, Image 17, Image 18, Image 19, Image 20).
Coral cover
Coral cover: 18% — the site cover estimate from Anderson Mayfield's Mauritius manuscript (his manual point count and CoralNet, weighted equally); the manual point count alone is 26%. The earlier four-method average for this site was 30.2%; every method is compared in the table below. He is actively comparing CoralSCOP and DINOv3 against newer CV models and will swap in an updated figure here once a more reliable model is found.
Stressors
No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores evident.
Comparisons with other data
No independent survey was made at this exact site; the nearest ones are listed in the table below.
Other notes
Location approximate: no operator or dive directory lists a site named Reef Garden, so this site is placed near Ti Korail, the same morning's second dive — treat the position as indicative only.
CV model comparison
More info
The settled rule would raise every Mauritius site by 0–3.7 pp. Awaiting Anderson's ruling. The Claude row is the manuscript's Claude (with image context) value, scored on the same manual-reference frames as the manual count (v42 Table 3); the last of its five context batches had been seen before, so it is not fully blind. Anemone Garden is flagged non-reef in the source (anemone habitat); its manual value stands but carries no error term. CoralSCOP (SAM-based mask-sum), edited photos: n/a — no edited copies exist; EDITED_UNEDITED_RULES.md records Mauritius as verified 347/347 unedited| Method | Hard-coral cover (%) |
|---|---|
| Site cover estimate | 18.2 |
| Manual (draft manuscript) | 26.3 |
| CoralNet | 27.8 |
| In-house DINOv3 | 44.6 |
| CoralSCOP unedited | 22.2 |
| Claude | 26.7 |
Independent surveys nearby
| Agency / program | Year(s) | Stations / distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reef Check | 1999–2000 | 2 stations, 0.30–3.88 km | Records ↓ |
| WCS via MERMAID | 2016 | 1 station, 1.59 km | Records ↓ |
Dr. Coral (CRD)Within 5 km, 3 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 5 records between 1999 and 2016. Of the 1 station surveyed in more than one year, 1 declined between their first and latest surveys. The longest record, Island Reef (Reef Check, 0.30 km away), went from 61% in 1999 to 30% in 2000. The most recent nearby survey is from 2016, so these values predate recent heat stress. This site's own estimate (18%) sits 11.8 points below the range of these surveys (30–61%, excluding 1 best-patch value above 70% that is not a site mean); 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; MERMAID is a data platform: each MERMAID row names the organization that did the survey, and its method is in the row's hover text), 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reef Check | Island Reef | 1999–2000 | 30–61% (2 surveys) | 0.30 km | — |
| Reef Check | Island Reef, Anse La Raie | 1999 | 46% | 3.88 km | — |
| WCS via MERMAID | Bain Boeuf | 2016 | 71% (2 images) best patch | 1.59 km | Briand J, Darling E. 2016. 2016 bleaching surveys. MERMAID |
Data & links
- CoralNet image repository for this region ↗
- Photo portfolio ↗
- Coral Reef Diagnostics page for this area ↗
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.