Philippines - Coron: Green Lagoon (island-hopping snorkel)
Part of the regional summaries: Philippines - Palawan and Philippines
More info
Western Philippines (NOAA CRW virtual station) · Palawan/North Borneo ecoregion mean=4.0°C-heating weeksGreen Lagoon, one of the karst lagoons on Coron Island's south coast, had the richest coral of the three snorkel stops on a 2017 island-hopping day, with boulder and branching corals in the shallows. The record is based on just a handful of photos.
Two 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.
2 of these 3 photographs are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
Green Lagoon, Coron Island, Palawan — a snorkel stop on the island-hopping day of 28 January 2017, in the karst lagoons on Coron's south coast.
Coral cover
The reef here carried the highest cover of the three lagoon stops, with Porites and Seriatopora in the frames (e.g., Image 1, Image 2).
Unlike the Coron wreck and El Nido pins nearby, this stop has no DINOv3 pass of its own, so the figure rests on a single method with nothing to cross-check it. Coral cover: 36% — a single-method photographic index. The figure is a CoralSCOP computer vision over 4 frames of Anderson's own photographs, with no second method to cross-check it. CoralSCOP sums retained mask fractions with overlaps possible and segments coral-shaped objects rather than living tissue, so it scores standing dead skeleton as coral and does not measure cover the way a transect does. Against independent point-count surveys it reads high, and the bias is ADDITIVE rather than multiplicative: against 273,968 Catlin Seaview photoquadrats within 2 km of these pins, the relationship is close to his value = their value + about 18 percentage points, with the index appearing to have a floor near 15-20% - it does not report near-zero even where a 50-point count finds 1.0-3.0%. Read a low figure here as an upper bound and a near-zero reef as unresolved, not as the number shown.
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
Position is from the photographs' own GPS (4 frames), not an estimate.
Coral cover: method notes
Independent surveys nearby
Dr. Coral (CRD)Within 5 km, 2 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 6 surveys between 2013 and 2015. Of the 2 stations surveyed in more than one year, 2 declined between their first and latest surveys. The longest record, CYC East Reef (Reef Check, 3.30 km away), went from 73% (best patch) in 2013 to 34% in 2015. The most recent nearby survey is from 2015, so these values predate recent heat stress. This site's own estimate (36%) sits within the range of these surveys (28–66%, 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), 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 | CYC East Reef | 2013–2015 | 34–73% (3 surveys) best patch | 3.30 km | — |
| Reef Check | CYC West Reef | 2013–2015 | 28–66% (3 surveys) | 3.59 km | — |
Data & links
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.