Philippines - Verde Island Passage: Beatriz Island (Beatrice Rock)

Setting

Beatriz — Beatrice Rock — is a submerged boulder complex of massive rounded outcrops with steep faces, overhangs, and swim-through gaps, photographed in noticeably poorer visibility than Kirby's Rock, with many hazy blue-green frames on the deeper flanks (e.g., Image 3, Image 4).

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General benthic features

Barrel sponges define the site: Xestospongia testudinaria recurs through the wide-angle frames as very large individuals, several of them taller than a diver. Hard coral is present but subordinate — tabular Acropora, massive Porites, and foliose plates — while the visible biomass is sponge, soft coral, and crinoid. Black coral bushes, large gorgonian sea fans, a big orange elephant-ear sponge, brilliant red and magenta encrusting sponges and coralline, a large yellow soft-coral mass, blue Linckia sea stars, and crinoids in yellow, green, and black fill the rock.

Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 4.6% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 65 of Anderson's edited photographs and unedited originals (6 edited and 59 unedited originals, because edited versions of most of this dive's photos do not exist; 20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.
• It is not a diver survey or a transect; it is provisional and a better model will supersede it.

Stressors

There is no site-wide bleaching signal. Anderson also photographed a white barrel sponge beside a tan one for contrast; the white one is possibly bleached, though that cannot be confirmed from the frame.

Fish and other fauna

Anthias cloud every high point (e.g., Image 1), a tight writhing school of striped eel catfish (Plotosus lineatus) crosses the sand (e.g., Image 2), and lionfish and scorpionfish rest on the rubble.

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A small heavily tuberculate animal was seen matched in color and texture to the knobbly pink-and-white gorgonian it sits on — the classic presentation of a Bargibant's pygmy seahorse, and Anilao is a known locality for it. The identification is Anderson's own: three of the photographs are named for pygmy seahorses.

Comparisons with other data

Pinheiro et al. (2019) surveyed a nearby station (Sombrero Island, Tingloy), 0.42 km from the pin; we could not confirm that it is the same reef. Cover values from that work are not among the survey records shown on this page. Within 5 km, four Reef Check stations recorded station-year means of 36–72% hard coral cover between 2010 and 2017; the nearest of these, Reef Check at Inner Layag Layag Reef, 2.29 km away, read 64% in 2014.

Dive record

The second dive of the Verde Island Passage day, 1 October 2016, in at 10:53 for 45 minutes to a maximum of 23.2 m (mean 13.7 m) at 29.0°C average (dive-computer minimum 27.8°C); all 72 frames on file were reviewed.