Oman - Daymaniyat Site 1
Part of the regional summary: Oman
More info
Gulf of Oman (NOAA CRW virtual station)Daymaniyat Site 1 is a shallow, strongly zoned reef complex — near-monospecific meadows of tabular Acropora and dense Pocillopora fields separated by white sand channels and Porites bommies, with sea turtles photographed repeatedly and a stingray resting on the sand plain. Published hard coral cover is 42%, with a further 20% of points scored as soft coral, though photo review found most of those points fall on tabular hard corals the classifier mislabeled; very little bleaching was seen, though heat stress and bleaching were reported along this coast from July 2024, weeks after the surveys.
الموقع 1 في الديمانيات مجمع شعاب ضحل واضح التقسيم — مروج شبه أحادية النوع من Acropora الطاولية وحقول كثيفة من Pocillopora تفصلها قنوات رملية بيضاء وكتل Porites، مع سلاحف بحرية صُوّرت مرارًا ولخمة مستريحة على السهل الرملي. والتغطية المنشورة للمرجان الصلب 42%، مع 20% إضافية من النقاط صُنّفت مرجانًا لينًا، وإن وجدت مراجعة الصور أن معظم هذه النقاط يقع على مرجانيات صلبة طاولية أخطأ المصنِّف في تسميتها؛ ولم يُشاهد إلا قليل جدًا من الابيضاض، وإن كان الإجهاد الحراري والابيضاض قد سُجّلا على امتداد هذا الساحل ابتداءً من يوليو 2024، بعد المسوح بأسابيع.
ترجمة هذا الملخص بالذكاء الاصطناعي؛ النص الإنجليزي هو المعتمد.
Seven independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
Two other CRD dive sites with their own pages within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.
13 of the 19 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
A shallow, strongly zoned patch-reef complex in the Daymaniyat Islands: near-monospecific meadows of tabular Acropora, dense corymbose Pocillopora fields, and large massive Porites bommies stand on white sand threaded with open channels (e.g., Image 3, Image 4, Image 5, Image 9, Image 10, Image 14, Image 19, Image 20).
Coral cover
- Reference: Mayfield (2025)
- CoralNet submission package
- Hard coral cover 42% (CoralNet point annotation; Mayfield 2025, Platax), plus 20% scored as soft coral. An August 2026 photo review of this site's frames found that most of these soft-coral points fall on tabular hard corals the classifier mislabeled, so the hard coral figure likely understates the true hard coral share.
- Published hard coral cover 42% (Mayfield 2025, Platax, Table 1; CoralNet point annotation, 30 points per photo, hard coral as a share of benthic points with water and fish excluded).
- Sample sizes: published point count 79 photos · CoralNet 79 · DINOv3 56 · CoralSCOP 56.
- Coral cover — published point-count value.
- This figure is the published point count from Anderson Mayfield's own work (Mayfield 2025; point annotation in CoralNet, mixed manual + automated).
- It carries the provenance of the paper it appears in and is not subject to the CoralSCOP/DINOv3 caveats applied elsewhere on this map.
Stressors
Very little bleaching was observed during these May 2024 surveys (about 0.02% of coral tissue area; Mayfield 2025), before the seasonal SST peak; NOAA CRW recorded Alert Level 2 heat stress and bleaching was reported along this coast from July 2024, weeks after the surveys. No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores were evident.
Fish and other fauna
Sea turtles were photographed repeatedly in the water column, a large stingray rested on the sand plain, and the sand carried abundant sea cucumbers, with sohal surgeonfish, sergeant majors, and damselfish clouds over the coral stands (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 15, Image 16, Image 18).
Comparisons with other data
Sultan Qaboos University surveyed this site (Dimaniyat - Turtle City (Shallow)) in 2026, 0.10 km from the pin. Within 5 km, seven independent stations (Environment Authority-Oman, Sultan Qaboos University, and submitted to MERMAID by Alhussaini A.) recorded station-year means of 0.0–35% hard coral cover between 2025 and 2026; the nearest, Sultan Qaboos University at Dimaniyat - Turtle City (Shallow), 0.10 km away, read 0.0% in 2026.
CV model comparison
More info
Cave Site is the ONLY real CoralNet comparison in this region. The two CoralSCOP values are paired — a photo counts only if both its edited and unedited versions were scored, so the edited-minus-unedited difference is not a frame-selection artifact. CoralSCOP cover is a mask-sum AREA fraction; no point denominator applies to it. The Claude value comes from blind scoring of edited photos (15 frames per site, 13 at Daymaniyat site 3); a separate, harder blind test on unedited photos gives a different, non-interchangeable number.| Method | Hard coral cover (%) | Photos (n) ± SE |
|---|---|---|
| Published point count (mixed manual + automated) | 41.7 | |
| CoralNet (published survey's own annotation) | 41.7 | n = 79 |
| In-house DINOv3 | 34.4 | n = 56 |
| CoralSCOP unedited | 23.2 | n = 56 |
| CoralSCOP edited | 24.6 | n = 56 |
| Claude | 51.2* | n = 15 |
The four computer-vision methods disagree by 28.0 pp (23.2–51.2%) and read on both sides of the published point count (41.7%); the headline is the published point count because it is the site's published value (mixed manual + automated: the paper scored 260 of its 661 Oman frames by hand and 401 with CoralNet's AI).
The CoralNet (published survey's own annotation) row is shown for reference only, outside this comparison.
*Based on only 15 reef-habitat photos; this estimate is less certain.
See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.
Independent surveys nearby
| Agency / program | Year(s) | Stations / distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Environment Authority-Oman | 2026 | 1 station, 3.74 km | Records ↓ |
| submitted to MERMAID by Alhussaini A.* | 2025 | 2 stations, 0.46–3.44 km | Records ↓ |
| Sultan Qaboos University | 2026 | 4 stations, 0.10–0.54 km | Records ↓ |
Coral Reef DiagnosticsYear-average (illustrative only, programs differ)Within 5 km, 7 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 9 surveys between 2025 and 2026. Since 2021, station-year means average 11% (range 0.0–35%; n = 7 station-years from 9 surveys). This site's own estimate (42%) sits 7 points above the recent range of station-year means up to 2 km away (0.0–35%); the methods differ, so the comparison is context, not a like-for-like test.
Collected by other programs using different methods (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. *Conducted by citizen scientists), so these are context for the figures above, not a like-for-like comparison. Where a station was surveyed more than once, the cell shows either the range of its values or, as a single value, the mean of surveys made in one year. Station names are not dive-site names.
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 above.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.