Raja Ampat - Melissa's Garden (Fam/Penemu)

Setting

Dive 24, Melissa's Garden (Fam/Penemu), 21 October 2018 — 89 habitat frames.

General benthic features

What the frames show, in order. The set opens on structure rather than scenery: Image 1 is a single large tiered Acropora table photographed from above in ambient green light, its lobes overlapping into a near-continuous disc with blue-green damselfishes sheltering across it.

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Frames not shown here pull back to the slope — layered laminar plates stacked over a branching thicket, with massive domes and encrusting sheets filling the gaps and open blue behind. A frame not shown here is the exception in the early run: a shallower, more worked-over patch where gray foliose whorls sit among dense fleshy and red algal turf rather than clean coral. Image 6 returns to tiered plate stacks: broad orange-brown laminar tiers shingled one over another. Image 7, Image 8, and Image 9 are mixed reef-top frames: plates, encrusting and massive colonies, crinoids, red encrusting sponges, and in Image 9 a pale gorgonian at the upper edge of the frame.

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The middle of the dive is where the diversity of growth forms is clearest. Image 10 is a large gray foliose plate whose upper surface carries visible partial mortality and algal film — one of the few frames in the set showing an obviously compromised colony. Image 11 and Image 13 both center on bright orange gorgonian sea whips, in Image 11 rising beside a smooth massive Porites dome at the edge of a sand patch; Image 13 adds a Moorish idol and dense branching corals. Image 12 is a school of blue-and-yellow fusiliers streaming over branching Acropora. Image 14 holds a vivid red-and-black meandering encrusting colony low in the frame. Image 15, Image 16, Image 23, Image 38, Image 68, Image 69, Image 74, Image 79, and Image 80 all include a diver in the water column, which gives the wide-angle shots their scale. Image 17 is a shadowed stack of brown laminar tiers; Image 2 a dark, crinoid-heavy reef face. Image 19 is the tightest frame of the dive: the contact margin where a smooth massive colony abuts a finely-textured plating colony, with a thin white line where the two colonies meet and a small yellow-and-black-banded animal tucked under the overhang. Image 20, Image 21, and Image 22 are mixed high-relief mounds combining plates, soft corals, and massives. Image 24 has a pufferfish hanging over a pale table plate. Image 26 is a single very large massive Porites boulder occupying most of the frame — the biggest solitary colony in the set. Image 27 stacks two broad Acropora tables one above the other, the lower one yellow-green.

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From Image 28 onward the tabular and branching Acropora take over. Image 28 is a corymbose table crowded with blue damselfish; Image 29 an arborescent Acropora colony growing directly on a large encrusting sheet at the sand margin; Image 32 frames two big tables, one raised well clear of the substrate on a narrow stalk. Image 31 and Image 40 are near-monospecific fields of laminar and whorled foliose plates. Image 33 is a mixed massive-dome patch with an urchin wedged in it. Image 35 and Image 34 are open staghorn thickets running out into blue water. Image 41 is the standout close-up of the second half: a pink-mauve meandroid brain coral, hemispherical and intact, sitting on clean substrate at the foot of a staghorn thicket. Image 42 is a broad meandering sheet coral with branching colonies growing over it.

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The later frames are dominated by two things: extensive shallow branching fields, and large plating rosettes. Image 47, Image 48, Image 52, and Image 53 show yellow-green corymbose and branching stands with fusilier schools working over them and clean sand channels between. Image 51 and Image 56 are tiered pale plate stacks; Image 59 is a large foliose rosette with a distinct bright yellow growing margin, damselfishes over it; Image 60 and Image 63 repeat the rosette form in pale gray and yellow. Image 57 is a clean rounded meandroid brain-coral dome standing alone on rubble. Image 64 is the most striking single colony of the dive: a large deep red-pink foliose colony, whorls tightly packed, sitting proud of the surrounding reef. Image 65 scatters similar red material across a wider view. Image 66 is brown laminar plates with bright white active growing margins. Image 67 catches the reef edge meeting white sand, small colonies scattered at the interface.

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The closing run (e.g., Image 74, Image 75, Image 76, Image 77, Image 78, Image 79, Image 80, Image 81, Image 82, Image 83, Image 84, Image 85, Image 86, Image 87, Image 88, Image 89) is the shallow coral garden the site is named for. Image 74 is a large branching Acropora field with a diver above it; Image 76 and Image 77 are wide shallow expanses of foliose and branching colonies running to the limit of visibility; Image 80 is a stand of columnar/digitate colonies with the branching field continuing behind. Image 82, Image 83, Image 84, and Image 87 are dense branching/staghorn fields, with Image 83 in dim blue light and Image 84 with chromis over it. Image 85 is the highest-diversity single frame in the set — branching, digitate, foliose, tabular, and massive forms all within one frame. Image 86 is a wide shallow view including a pale, apparently dead table plate in the foreground against otherwise dense living cover.

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The set ends on Image 88 and Image 89, a broad yellow-green Acropora table with a purple-brown branching colony perched on top of it. What the frames support, and what they don't. Across 89 frames the reef is consistently high-relief and closely packed, with tabular and branching Acropora, laminar and foliose plating colonies, and massive Porites and meandroid domes all abundant, plus gorgonians, crinoids, encrusting sponges, and soft corals filling the interstices.

Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 41% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 89 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

Visible compromise is rare and localized — the algal-turf patch at a frame not shown here, the partly dead plate at Image 10, the pale table at Image 86 — and no frame in the set shows anything resembling widespread bleaching. Two plates in a stack of brown plates are pale lilac-white with live tissue, paler than the plates around them: possible partial bleaching of two colonies (one frame, Image 5).

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No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores were evident.

Fish and other fauna

Fish are present in most frames (fusiliers, damselfishes, chromis, an angelfish, a pufferfish) but the photographs are not a fish survey and nothing here quantifies biomass.

Comparisons with other data

Yuanike et al. (2019) surveyed this site (Mellisa Garden, Station 3). Within 5 km, seven independent stations recorded station-year means of 25–86% hard coral cover between 2016 and 2025; the nearest, Yuanike et al. (2019) at Station 3, 0.94 km away, read a mean of 86% in 2016.