Philippines - Anilao: Monte Carlo Hotel

General benthic features

Anderson's own notes on the frames set the depth structure, from the shallows to the deeper slope, and the site is genuinely zoned, with a field of overlapping pale plating and foliose corals (Turbinaria, Echinopora lamellosa, and the Montipora group) forming near-continuous cover on the deeper slope (frames noted as 30–40 m, looking down into deep water; computer max 23.5 m), a mid-slope of sunken objects, and shallows dominated by rubble and turf with only sparse recruits (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 5, Image 6, Image 7, Image 25).

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The artificial reef is the draw: an upright Volkswagen Beetle on sand, a mermaid statue, a large standing cross on a masonry base, and a deliberate tableau of household fixtures — bathtubs and sinks, a television set, a desk with a telephone, and toilets, one with a massive coral colony growing in the bowl (e.g., Image 13, Image 20, Image 21, Image 22, Image 23).

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Deployed coral settlement tiles are also present, one carrying crustose coralline algae and small recruits, with Anderson pointing out a marked plate — a recruitment installation, not incidental debris (e.g., Image 8).

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Large Euphyllia hammer-coral stands in cream and turquoise are the finest stony corals here (e.g., Image 18).

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Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 29% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 57 of Anderson's edited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.

Stressors

Bleaching affected several small fine-branching colonies: a Seriatopora (Anderson's ID) noted at the time as dying is stark white across its core with golden-brown branches at the margin (e.g., Image 3), and three more stark-white fine-branching colonies sit on sediment-dusted rubble beside a brown plating recruit (e.g., Image 34).

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Two more frames show white areas read as recent mortality, cause not stated: chalk-white tops on many lobes of a lobed massive colony (e.g., Image 51) and a roughly circular patch of stark-white branches inside a brown staghorn thicket (e.g., Image 26).

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

Fish and other fauna

Damselfish and anemonefish have colonized all of it. The macrofauna is abundant: Phyllidia and Phyllidiella nudibranchs, several blue Chromodoris including an apparent mating pair, a tiger cowrie, cleaner shrimp in the crevices, and a granulated sea star (Choriaster) (e.g., Image 9, Image 10, Image 11, Image 12, Image 16, Image 17).

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A run of five consecutive frames records green turtles foraging over the rubble (e.g., Image 14, Image 15); the sequence cannot establish how many individuals it shows.

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Comparisons with other data

We found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. Within 5 km, nine Reef Check stations recorded station-year means of 19–89% hard coral cover between 2010 and 2017; the nearest, Reef Check at San Teodoro, 1.76 km away, read 27% in 2010.

Dive record

The third dive of 30 September 2016: a house reef that is substantially man-made. All 82 frames in Anderson's Monte Carlo Hotel dive folder were reviewed (two more frames from the dive are filed in the marine-life folders).