Philippines - Verde Island Passage: Kirby's Rock

Setting

Kirby's Rock is a true pinnacle, and Anderson's frames resolve it cleanly into a shallow top at 2-3 m (e.g., Image 1) and steep current-exposed flanks dropping into blue water (e.g., Image 4).

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General benthic features

Hard coral on the pinnacle top and upper flanks includes tabular and plating Acropora, large massive Porites domes, brain corals, branching Acropora, and Pocillopora thickets, foliose plates, and one big massive colony photographed with polyps fully extended (e.g., Image 1). Lavender, white, and cream Dendronephthya, gray-green colonial ascidians, Tubastraea cups, and abundant crinoids, including a striking white feather star, fill the remaining space (e.g., Image 3).

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Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 8.6% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 39 of Anderson's edited photographs (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; the reef reads healthy and structurally complex, with the usual background of turf, rubble pockets, and old mortality on the deeper flanks. One large massive colony carries a pale, sharply bordered patch (possibly disease or partial bleaching, per Anderson) whose cause cannot be resolved from the frame (e.g., Image 16).

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Fish and other fauna

Its fish life includes dense clouds of anthias streaming over the wall, and tight formations of blue-striped snapper and yellow fusiliers. A vivid red encrusting sponge hosts a scatter of brilliant yellow sea cucumbers (Colochirus robustus) — Anderson's own identification, and worth flagging because at a glance they read as nudibranchs (e.g., Image 10).

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Anderson also photographed a frogfish and a large white dorid nudibranch on ascidian stalks.

Comparisons with other data

Reef Check surveyed a nearby station (Inner Layag Layag Reef), 0.37 km from the pin; we could not confirm that it is the same reef. Within 5 km, seven Reef Check stations recorded station-year means of 19–89% hard coral cover between 2010 and 2017; the nearest, Reef Check at Inner Layag Layag Reef, 0.37 km away, read 64% in 2014.

Dive record

The first dive of the three-tank Verde Island Passage day on 1 October 2016, in at 08:20 for 58 minutes to a maximum of 28 m (mean 14.9 m) at 28.6°C average (dive-computer minimum 27.8°C); all 67 frames on file were reviewed, one of them a topside boat shot.

Other notes

The deeper slope around the pinnacle is documented only in the underwater frames of the dive.