Raja Ampat - Barracuda Rock
Part of the regional summary: Indonesia - Raja Ampat
More info
West Papua (NOAA CRW virtual station)Barracuda Rock is an unusually sheltered fringing reef with extraordinary coral diversity — at least 50-60 species, many low-flow growth forms, and a possible undescribed thick-branched Seriatopora seen repeatedly. CRD has no cover value of its own here.
Barracuda Rock adalah terumbu tepi yang luar biasa terlindung dengan keragaman karang yang luar biasa - sedikitnya 50-60 spesies, banyak bentuk pertumbuhan untuk arus lemah, dan kemungkinan Seriatopora bercabang tebal yang belum dideskripsikan, yang terlihat berulang kali. CRD tidak memiliki nilai tutupan sendiri di sini.
Terjemahan ringkasan ini oleh AI; versi bahasa Inggris yang berlaku.
Five independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
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Photo: PierreSite description
Setting
An extremely protected rock island fringing reef in an archipelago within an archipelago within the Pulau Misool region of Raja Ampat. Anderson's dive note gives the water as 28.0°C; the lower reading in the dive log is 27.0°C. Surface current.
General benthic features
Corals showed characteristic growth types of low flow/low wave energy. Some small Pachyseris spp. plates, Diploastrea, Montipora, Sinularia, Sarcophyton, very strange Seriatopora with thick branches. Saw it at multiple places at site, including shallows. Green Seriatopora caliendrum common at site. Incredibly high coral diversity: at least 50-60 species. 20-30 species unable to identify. Lobophyllia, Astrocoenia, Fungia, Echinopora, Goniopora, octopus (photographed by another diver), staghorn thicket, several large Acropora tables going down slope. Pocillopora acuta with extremely thin branches. Golden tunicates everywhere (common in Papua evidently). Soft corals common at all parts of site. Stylophora pistillata, P. rus plates, Pocillopora verrucosa, small Porites mounds, Plerogyra. Hard coral diversity particularly high at 10 m. Euphyllia, stinging hydroids, fire coral, >60 species of hard coral at 2-10 m. Top of reef (5 m) dominated by soft corals, Acropora spp., tunicates, and small poritids. Some large Acropora colonies turned into damselfish gardens/nests. One Pocillopora acuta colony was seen at 1-2 m.
Coral cover
- CRD has no cover value of its own here.
- The account above is descriptive background, not a survey result.
Stressors
Anderson's dive notes for this dive (18 October 2018) record that some large Acropora colonies had been turned into damselfish gardens or nests, and they record no bleaching, disease, crown-of-thorns starfish, or other stressor.
Comparisons with other data
Social Ecological Research Frontiers (SERF) / University of Rhode Island (URI) / Thriving Oceans surveyed a nearby station (Wayil Batan North) in 2019, 0.07 km from the pin. Within 5 km, five independent stations recorded station-year means of 18–48% hard coral cover between 2019 and 2026; the nearest, Social Ecological Research Frontiers (SERF) / University of Rhode Island (URI) / Thriving Oceans at Wayil Batan North, 0.07 km away, read 27% in 2019.
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
Barracuda Rock was dive 14 of the 2018 Raja Ampat trip.
Other notes
Anderson's dive notes mention photographs of a possible new species.
Independent surveys nearby
| Agency / program | Year(s) | Stations / distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| MERMAID project “Lilah coral EE” | 2026 | 1 station, 3.38 km | Records ↓ |
| Social Ecological Research Frontiers (SERF) / University of Rhode Island (URI) / Thriving Oceans | 2019 | 4 stations, 0.07–4.56 km | Records ↓ |
Within 5 km, 5 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 5 surveys between 2019 and 2026. One survey since 2021 recorded 18%.
Collected by other programs using different methods (MERMAID is a data platform: each MERMAID row names the organization that did the survey, and its method is in the row's hover text), 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.
Data & links
Images 5–14: Pierre; all other images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data on this page are from the organizations named in the data sources above, not Coral Reef Diagnostics; Coral Reef Diagnostics has no coral cover estimate of its own at this site.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.
References
- Razak TB, Alisa CAG, Abrar M, Ardiwijaya R, Bachtiar I, Budaya RR, et al. (2026). Two decades of coral monitoring reveal thermal stress thresholds on Indonesian reefs. Biological Conservation 318:111781. DOI