Mauritius - Ti Korail

Setting

Ti Korail is a low-relief patch reef and rubble/sand flat rather than a wall or slope, with scattered coral heads and small bommies rising from broad areas of open sand and coral rubble (e.g., Image 5, Image 10, Image 13).

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General benthic features

The larger colonies were massive Porites and brain coral forms consistent with Dipsastraea/Favites, together with smaller branching and digitate growth compatible with Acropora or Pocillopora, occasional foliose plates, and fungiids scattered across the rubble (e.g., Image 2, Image 6, Image 7).

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Live coral cover was highly patchy, with isolated healthy colonies set against an otherwise bare, sediment-covered substrate (e.g., Image 3, Image 11).

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Coral cover

Coral cover: 5.4% — the site cover estimate from Anderson Mayfield's Mauritius manuscript (his manual point count and CoralNet, weighted equally); the manual point count alone is 7.0%. The earlier four-method average for this site was 15.0%; every method is compared in the table below. The figure pools a manual annotation, CoralNet point counts, an in-house DINOv3 point classifier, and a CoralSCOP computer vision over Anderson's own frames. 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, though a few colonies showed pale or whitened polyps that image quality alone cannot reliably distinguish from natural coloration (e.g., Image 20).

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No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores evident.

Fish and other fauna

Dense schools of bluestripe snapper and silvery fusilier-type fish moved over the reef flat, accompanied by clouds of small blue damselfish (e.g., Image 1, Image 4, Image 16, Image 17, Image 19).

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Individually notable sightings included a large spotted porcupinefish, a triggerfish, a lionfish, and a well-camouflaged leaf scorpionfish (e.g., Image 8, Image 9, Image 18).

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Other fauna included an octopus, a giant clam, a long-spined black sea urchin, and garden eels over the sand (e.g., Image 12).

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Comparisons with other data

A published figure above about 70% usually reflects the surveyors choosing the most coral-rich part of the reef, so read it as a best-patch number rather than a site mean.