Philippines - Port Barton, Palawan: island-hopping stop 1 (San Miguel area)

Setting

The sea surface is visible in one frame, so at least part of this is snorkel depth over the reef flat, dropping into deep blue in the wider views (e.g., Image 13).

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Visibility is good and the water is clean blue — a different world from the Alberguin wreck the day before.

General benthic features

The photographs of this reef justify the word "spectacular". Two habitats dominate, and each fills multiple frames edge to edge with no visible substrate at all. The first is Acropora: monospecific staghorn thickets running to the limit of visibility across four separate frames, mauve-brown and cream morphs abutting one another, branch tips pale and intact; and fields of tabulate Acropora plates tiled over each other, olive-green with bright white growing margins (e.g., Image 2, Image 3, Image 5, Image 8, Image 11, Image 12, Image 14).

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The second is foliose plating coral in whorled, vase-like tiers with startling violet and lilac growing edges, filling six or seven frames as an unbroken pavement of living plates (e.g., Image 7, Image 16, Image 17, Image 18, Image 19, Image 20, Image 22).

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Between them sit the massives: enormous smooth massive coral bommies, cream to golden-brown, some blistered and bore-holed, one abutting a staghorn bed directly; knobbly ridged coral stands; gray-brown digitate/columnar stands; pink-mauve Pocillopora clusters; and one handsome tan corymbose Acropora dome with white branch tips (e.g., Image 1, Image 6, Image 9, Image 15, Image 21, Image 25).

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Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 67% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 41 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

The photo review found no disease lesions, no crown-of-thorns, and no bleaching; however, a computer-vision point count called 1.1% of coral points bleached (1 of 41 photos). Two frames contain a small bright-white patch that reads as a recently broken or recently dead branch cluster, not a bleaching event (e.g., Image 10).

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Nothing man-made appears in any frame.

Fish and other fauna

Fish are unobtrusive — orange anthias, sergeant majors, chromis clouds over the staghorn, damsels, and a wrasse (e.g., Image 4).

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Comparisons with other data

Reef Check surveyed a nearby station (Exotic Island) in 2019, 0.17 km from the pin. Within 5 km, eight Reef Check stations recorded station-year means of 15–45% hard coral cover between 1998 and 2019; the nearest, Reef Check at Exotic Island, 0.17 km away, read a mean of 33% in 2019.

Dive record

All 25 frames reviewed (2017-01-21 island-hopping circuit).

Other notes

Every single frame is in-water reef; there is not one topside, gear, or diver shot in the set.