Philippines - El Nido: Paglugaban Rocks (Bacuit Archipelago)
Part of the regional summaries: Philippines - Palawan and Philippines
More info
Western Philippines (NOAA CRW virtual station)A structurally varied rocky fore-reef with a striking variety of growth forms — branching and tabular colonies, Anderson's Seriatopora and Pocillopora, plates, massives, and brain corals — plus cuttlefish and a giant clam. Condition reads good, with isolated mortality spots rather than disease or bleaching. A blind Claude computer-vision point count puts coral cover around 34%.
Isang mabatong fore reef na iba-iba ang estruktura, na may kahanga-hangang sari-saring anyo ng paglaki — mga sumasanga at tabular na kolonya, Seriatopora at Pocillopora (ayon sa pagkakakilanlan ni Anderson), mga platong koral, malalaking (massive) koral, at brain coral — kasama ang mga cuttlefish at isang higanteng taklobo. Mukhang maayos ang kalagayan, na may mga hiwa-hiwalay na batik ng pagkamatay sa halip na sakit o pamumuti. Ayon sa blind point count ng Claude computer vision, humigit-kumulang 34% ang saklaw ng koral.
Salin ng buod na ito gamit ang AI; ang Ingles ang opisyal na bersyon.
One independent survey station shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
21 of the 37 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
It is a gently rolling fore-reef around an offshore rock outcrop, low to moderate relief, with sand and rubble channels at the deeper margins; the water is hazy and several frames are soft from a fogged housing (e.g., Image 7, Image 14, Image 15).
General benthic features
Dense foliose, ruffled brown Turbinaria-type coral dominates one section with reef fish moving through it, and nearby a large plate coral with a pale growing margin sits amid purple encrusting sponge and yellow coralline algae — a structurally varied rocky reef (e.g., Image 2, Image 5).
Genus diversity is the site's signature: mixed branching and corymbose Acropora, tabular and shelf-like plates with clean pale margins, pink-to-mauve fine-branched stands identified as Seriatopora hystrix, Pocillopora verrucosa and Pocillopora acuta, gold-tan digitate Acropora, tiered Montipora / Echinopora / Turbinaria whorls, Anderson's own Pavona meadow, massive and columnar Porites, Platygyra and Goniastrea maze colonies, fungiids, and a giant clam (e.g., Image 1, Image 3, Image 6, Image 9, Image 10, Image 11, Image 12, Image 13, Image 16, Image 17, Image 18, Image 22, Image 24, Image 25).
Coral cover
- Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
- Coral cover: 34% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 98 of Anderson's edited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.
- The wide-angle frames show substantial turf, rubble, and standing dead framework between live colonies.
- It is not a diver survey and is provisional.
Stressors
Condition reads good with no bleaching front: the scattered stark-white patches on single colonies are isolated recent-mortality spots, and Anderson noted the reef as brittle in one frame of fragile, fine-branching colonies in the shallows, not broken framework (e.g., Image 26).
No crown-of-thorns, no disease lesions.
Fish and other fauna
Cuttlefish appear in five frames and at least two individuals, a crocodile flathead twice, plus anemonefish, butterflyfish, schooling yellow fusiliers, and crinoids (e.g., Image 23).
Comparisons with other data
We found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. Within 5 km, one independent station, Reef Check at Abdeen's Rock, 3.57 km away, read 42–61% between 2013 and 2014.
Dive record
Paglugaban Rocks — the second Bacuit Archipelago dive of 24 January 2017, in at 12:29 for 58 minutes to a maximum of 20.1 m (mean 13.4 m) at 27.8°C.
Other notes
All 98 frames were reviewed, every one of them underwater.
CV model comparison
More info
A few low-cover photos (sand, rubble, or open bottom) pull the mean down; the median is the typical photo. No computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images, so treat this as indicative rather than a measurement; it is revised as the methods improve.More info
DINOv3 and CoralSCOP were run on the same photos and are listed for comparison. Coralscapes v2 is shown as its own row for comparison only: the author does not consider Coralscapes reliable for these photos, so it is low confidence and never enters any average or summary. No diver transect exists for this trip, so agreement between the rows is not accuracy, and no computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images; treat every row as indicative.| Method | Hard coral cover (%) | Photos (n) ± SE |
|---|---|---|
| In-house DINOv3 | 27.2 | n = 98 · SE 0.9 |
| CoralSCOP edited | 31.3 | n = 98 · SE 1.2 |
| Claude (edited photos) | 34.0 | n = 98 · SE 1.9 |
| Coralscapes v2 (low confidence, never averaged) | 54.6 |
The two computer-vision methods agree within 4.1 pp (27.2–31.3%) and read within 6.8 pp of Claude's blind point count (34.0%).
See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.
Independent surveys nearby
Coral Reef DiagnosticsWithin 5 km, 1 independent survey station recorded hard coral cover in 4 surveys between 2013 and 2014. The one station surveyed in more than one year increased by 19 points between its first and latest surveys. The longest record, Abdeen's Rock (Reef Check, 3.57 km away), went from 42% in 2013 (mean of 2 surveys) to 61% in 2014 (mean of 2 surveys). The most recent nearby survey is from 2014, so these values predate recent heat stress. This site's own estimate (34%) is not compared with these surveys: none lies within 2 km.
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 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.
| Agency | Site / location | Date | Hard coral cover (%) | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reef Check | Abdeen's Rock | 2013–2014 | 42–61% (range of yearly means; 4 surveys) | 3.57 km |
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data are from Coral Reef Diagnostics and the organizations named in the data sources above.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.