Raja Ampat - Anchovy

Setting

The dive began on the deep wall (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 6, Image 7, Image 9, Image 10, Image 11, Image 12, Image 14, Image 15, Image 16, Image 17, Image 18).

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General benthic features

Image 1 is the opening frame and the one that matches Anderson's "wall dominated by sea fans, soft corals, tunicates" note — a large dark maroon-black gorgonian sea fan filling the frame, orange and scarlet soft-coral tufts scattered along its base, hanging over a coralline-crusted face that drops away into pale gray-green haze. A frame not shown here is the murkiest frame in the set: a dark encrusting wall of algal turf, small pale foliose and bifacial plates, red and orange sponge patches, and a thin white whip coral crossing the frame. Deeper in the sequence the photographs become a portrait gallery of individual free-lying and encrusting colonies against bright pink-red coralline rubble, the most distinctive habitat signature of this dive. A frame not shown here is a low, flat, gray-lilac encrusting sheet with fine even corallites. A frame not shown here is a tan-brown irregular plate with lobed margins, thickened corallite ridges, and a bright white living edge, sitting isolated on magenta coralline pavement. A frame not shown here is the same growth form with vivid yellow polyps studding the surface, framed by a green feather star and a large white-and-gray feather-duster worm crown. Image 6 is a broad, near-circular chocolate-brown plate with fine concentric ridging and a crisp white growing margin — the classic Pachyseris-type surface Anderson's log names for this depth ("Pachyseris", "hard corals at 23 m tended to be plates, crusts, or foliaceous"). Image 11, Image 2 (left colony) and Image 10 repeat that form; Image 10 is the most striking single frame in the deep set, an olive-brown ridged plate studded with dozens of raised corallites whose mouths are brilliant fluorescent pink-scarlet. Image 7 is a wider view of the rubble slope, with small dark discoid free-living corals and a solitary tan-tentacled anemone or corallimorph on the upper right. Image 9 puts two pale cream anemone-form animals with white-tipped tentacles beside a dark, heavily verrucose brown colony with yellow-tipped projections. Image 12 is a dark maroon-brown lumpy encrusting colony on open sand with a small gorgonian beside it. Dark brown crusts and cups with coarse separated corallites appear at the right of Image 2, at the lower right of Image 9, and in Image 15. Image 14 clearly supports Anderson's "shingling, encrusting" note — a cascade of overlapping pale cream-gray plates stepped down the slope, with a dark violet-gray finely-porous colony beside them. Image 16 and Image 18 are dim, shadowed views of overlapping gray plates and shelves running along the wall; Image 18 holds the largest single stack of them. Image 17 is a broad flat colony with a striking dark brown ground and a maze of pale cream tubercles and ridges — unusual enough in appearance to be worth a look at full resolution. THE TRANSITION (e.g., Image 3, Image 19, Image 20, Image 21, Image 22, Image 23, Image 24, Image 25, Image 27, Image 28, Image 29, Image 30, Image 31, Image 32).

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Structure opens out and mixed assemblages appear. Image 19 is a large pale foliose colony with a lilac-blue sponge growing across its lower plates and black-coral bushes behind. Image 20 is the most crowded frame yet: a broad tan plate above, a fine gray-green corymbose colony, a pale anemone with white-tipped tentacles, dark gorgonian whips, and coralline-crusted rock. Image 21 is a tight view of a green-and-cream branching colony with fat blunt branchlets and prominent radial corallites, wedged among gray encrusting and knobby colonies. Image 22 is the first true wide frame — a large tan tabular colony and two further plates stepped down the slope, a diver in a blue hood above, and open water beyond. Image 23 puts a rounded lobed massive colony with broad flower-like corallites beside two fine pale-gray corymbose colonies against a wall of dark red encrusting sponge. Image 24 is a crowded mixed frame: pale corymbose Acropora, a fat leathery soft coral, a large white-edged plate, black-coral bushes, and a diver above. Image 25 is the poorest frame in the set — dim, low-contrast, and hazy, with one leathery soft coral in the foreground. Image 3 is the best structural photograph of the dive: a single very large tiered tabular/foliose colony, at least a meter across, stepped in overlapping plates and standing clear against deep blue water, with blue-and-yellow fish along its edge. Image 27 is a dense bank of pale cream and gray leathery soft corals (Sarcophyton-type, which Anderson's log names at 17 m) mixed with tan lobate hard coral. Image 28 is a large smooth gray massive dome with a few dark fish, soft corals, and blue sponge around its base against blue water. Image 29 is a wide soft-coral-and-hard coral mosaic — cream leathery colonies, pale bushy soft corals, a large gray dome behind, red and orange encrusting patches. Image 30 is almost wall-to-wall pale pink-mauve bushy soft coral. Image 31 is a bank of large overlapping brown foliose plates, individual leaves the size of dinner plates. Image 32 looks along a steep dark face with orange-red sponge, cream leathery soft corals, and a small pale plate coral bracketed against blue. The shallow garden (e.g., Image 4, Image 5, Image 33, Image 34, Image 35, Image 36, Image 37, Image 38, Image 40, Image 41, Image 42, Image 43, Image 44, Image 45, Image 46, Image 47, Image 48, Image 49, Image 50, Image 51, Image 53, Image 54, Image 55, Image 56, Image 57, Image 58, Image 59, Image 60, Image 61, Image 62).

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This is where the photographs show the densest coral on this dive, matching Anderson's log's "very high hard coral diversity at 8 m" and "60% ALCC [average live coral cover] in places @ 7-8 m". Image 33 is a cloud of orange-red anthias over an olive-green reef top. Image 34, Image 35, and Image 36 are wide reef-top frames with big cream leathery soft corals in the foreground, branching and corymbose hard coral behind, and blue water above; Image 34 also carries an orange-tentacled anemone-form animal filling the lower right. Image 37 and Image 38 are the pair to look at for growth form: both are dominated by golden-yellow, white-tipped, coarsely branching colonies; Image 38 is a tight macro of them against pale bushy soft coral and a cream grooved massive colony. Image 4 and Image 40 are wide shallow gardens of orange-brown branching and bushy colonies with pale corymbose and massive corals mixed in. Image 41 shows a large cream leathery soft-coral cluster with an extensive bed of orange-brown branching coral behind it and divers silhouetted at the surface. Image 42 is a big flat tabular Acropora, close to a meter across, seen from above with orange soft coral beneath. Image 43 and Image 44 are wide shallow frames with yellow-green branching thickets in the foreground, sergeant-majors and damselfish throughout. Image 46 is a wide reef top with a tabular colony left and dense pale branching coral right. One close-focused frame shows a shallow yellow-branching thicket with a compact white-tipped branching Acropora colony in the middle of it (e.g., Image 47). Image 48 is a wide slope with salmon-orange bushy soft corals and pale branching coral, divers above. Image 5, Image 49, Image 50, Image 51, and Image 53 are the core of the shallow set: five wide frames of an almost continuously coral-covered reef top, mixing pale blue-gray and white corymbose Acropora, orange-brown branching thickets, gray-green digitate colonies, and scattered massive domes, with no bare sand horizon in frame. Image 54 is a bank of very large pale gray-brown leathery soft corals. Image 55 is a dense mixed garden with a fine blue-gray corymbose colony center and pale foliose and lobate colonies around it. Image 56 is a broad pale table on a rubble slope against blue. Image 57 and Image 58 are near-monospecific stands of tall orange-brown branching or bushy colonies running away from the camera. Image 59 is a large pale gray plate with an irregular margin among orange-brown branching colonies and pink encrusting patches. Image 60 and Image 62 are the two softest, haziest wide frames in the photo set — dense low pale-mauve and gray branching cover with poor definition. Image 61 has a diver in the mid-ground above a brown branching thicket. Image 63 is a frame Anderson identified as Pocillopora acuta, a close view of a dark brown branching colony with pale branch tips beside translucent white soft coral, against red and pink encrusting sponge — a field identification that stands; the log independently records P. acuta as common in the shallows here.

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The set documents a steep, deep-based reef with three distinct zones: a dark, sea-fan-and-soft-coral wall with an unusually plate-, crust-, and foliose-dominated hard coral assemblage on coralline rubble (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 6, Image 7, Image 9, Image 10, Image 11, Image 12, Image 14, Image 15, Image 16, Image 17, Image 18); a transitional slope with large tabular and tiered colonies and leathery soft corals (e.g., Image 3, Image 19, Image 20, Image 21, Image 22, Image 23, Image 24, Image 25, Image 27, Image 28, Image 29, Image 30, Image 31, Image 32); and a bright, structurally complex shallow reef top with high hard coral cover and high apparent diversity (e.g., Image 4, Image 5, Image 33, Image 34, Image 35, Image 36, Image 37, Image 38, Image 40, Image 41, Image 42, Image 43, Image 44, Image 45, Image 46, Image 47, Image 48, Image 49, Image 50, Image 51, Image 53, Image 54, Image 55, Image 56, Image 57, Image 58, Image 59, Image 60, Image 61, Image 62). Coral in the shallow frames is intact and closely packed, with no bare pavement or rubble field in view. Fish are conspicuously sparse across the whole set apart from Image 33, Image 43, Image 44, and Image 45, which is consistent with Anderson's own note.

Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 32% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 64 of Anderson's edited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.
• There was no benthic transect on this dive.
• Anderson's own in-water note of "60% ALCC [average live coral cover] in places @ 7-8 m" is a local peak on the reef top, not a site mean.

Stressors

In the gallery frames, the white margins on the plate corals in Image 2, Image 6, Image 11, Image 15, and Image 19 are living growing edges, not bleached tissue, and the pale corymbose and branching colonies in Image 5, Image 49, Image 50, Image 51, and Image 53 are pigmented, not white. A computer-vision point count, however, called 0.3% of coral points bleached (1 of 64 photos: a pale patch on one plating colony). That score is not a field bleaching estimate. No disease bands and no macroalgal overgrowth were seen. No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores were evident.

Fish and other fauna

Image 45 is a mid-water frame — a loose school of silver jacks/trevally over a hazy reef, a frame that speaks to Anderson's "bait ball schools" and "some large fish" note; fish are otherwise sparse in these images, consistent with the note that fish biomass at 20 m was very low. Image 64, labeled as an octopus, shows a dark ledge in coralline-crusted rock with a smooth gray-black animal tucked against it.

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Comparisons with other data

We found no other surveys at this site as of 2026. If you would like to share yours, please email us.

Regional context, not a survey of this site: Razak et al. (2026) found no significant trend in hard coral cover at Misool (a rise of 0.2% per year at eight sites, surveyed by point-intercept transect at about 8–10 m in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, and 2015 by Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara); this is a trend for that location, not this site’s cover.

Dive record

Anderson dived Anchovy once, on 20 October 2018 — entry 10:15, 59 minutes, 32.9 m maximum depth, 28.0°C. The log describes the site as "a shear wall in the middle of nowhere: patch reef or sea mount?", dropped into deep blue with very few fish, and the photographs follow exactly that profile: they start deep, dark and close-focused on individual colonies, and end shallow, bright, and wide over a dense coral garden.

Other notes

Anderson's log for this dive records three octopus; one appears in Image 64. The frames cannot settle depth per frame, cannot confirm the several "never-before-seen" corals, corallimorph and anemone that Anderson's log records at 30 m and 17 m, and cannot confirm the pygmy seahorses or the 33 m grouper — none of those are resolvable in these photographs.