Indonesia - Maluku

This page brings together Anderson Mayfield's own dives in the Maluku and North Maluku provinces of eastern Indonesia: the Banda Islands and Ambon in April 2018, and a liveaboard crossing around Halmahera, Ternate, and Tidore in August 2026 aboard the Ambai (Wallacea Dive Cruises). They are not part of the Global Reef Expedition. Spalding et al. (2001) place the Moluccas in a deep-water sub-region of complex bathymetry where islands only tens of kilometers apart can be separated by more than 1,000 m of mostly clear, oceanic water. The Banda Islands include the young volcano Gunung Api, whose 1988 lava flow now carries reef, and two protected areas, the Taman Laut Banda and Gunung Api Banda recreation parks.

The area has 39 members. Ambon has three, all muck dives near Laha on 22 April 2018: Air Manis, Rhino City, and Laha-2. Banda has seven, dived from 25 to 28 April 2018 at Batu Kapal, Lava Flow (Gunung Api), Lighthouse, Airport (Banda Ara), Tanjung Pisang (Banana Island), and Shark Point and Goat Hall on Pulau Ai. Pulau Koon (Pulau Kon), off eastern Seram, has three, dived on 17 October 2018 during a Raja Ampat liveaboard trip: some pale and bleached Seriatopora caliendrum in the shallows on the first dive, a close-up series of stark-white Acropora branches beside pigmented ones on the second (flagged, not diagnosed), and partial mortality on large colonies on the third. Halmahera has 26, dived from 8 to 16 August 2026: a night dive off the Ternate waterfront (Pantai Falajawa) and one under the ferry jetty at Maliang Island, reefs in the Ternate-Tidore strait such as Maitara North and Failonga, current-swept points and drifts such as Pulau Sebatang, Kusu Drift, Tower Corner, Proco, and Jerot, and offshore seamounts and boulder fields such as Batu Mandi, Batu Balong, Siko Pinnacle, and Reene's Rock. Logged maximum depths ran from 5.9 m in the Batu Balong shallows to 35.1 m at Pulau Sebatang on Halmahera in 2026, and from 13.7 m at Lava Flow to 30.5 m at Airport in April 2018 (Tanjung Pisang's scuba dive that morning reached 31.4 m on Anderson's dive computer; the 2.4 m its pin carries is the same morning's snorkel over the flat); the first Pulau Koon dive, in October 2018, reached 33.8 m. The typical profile, in both Banda and Halmahera, is a steep wall or slope held by sponges, sea fans, and soft corals, rising to a shallow crest of near-continuous staghorn and tabular Acropora.

Cover at the Banda and Halmahera sites is Claude computer vision, a blind point count of each site's own photographs (7 Banda and 22 Halmahera sites; each site's value is on its own page); the three Ambon muck dives carry a CoralSCOP photographic index, which includes soft coral as well as hard coral and is not directly comparable. Claude values included 55% at Lava Flow (Gunung Api), where the 1988 lava channel now carries essentially complete plate-coral cover beside unbroken staghorn thickets, and 13% at Reene's Rock, a boulder community rather than a true reef. Jerot, where Anderson logged 22-25°C and thermoclines and wondered whether it is an upwelling area, read 23%. Mugia, a Halmahera night dive scored from only six frames, which Anderson's own field note calls "amazing coral cover", has no published value. Pulau Sebatang (41%) had near-continuous shallow Acropora. Ambon's muck sites (31% and 33% on the CoralSCOP index at Air Manis and Rhino City; Laha-2 carries no value) are largely sand, silt, and rubble, with coral in patches on bommies and ridges.

Condition differed between the two trips. In Banda in April 2018, localized bleaching or paling was photographed at every site except Batu Kapal (Tanjung Pisang, Lighthouse, Lava Flow, Airport, Shark Point, and Goat Hall), and one Airport table carried an irregular white patch of undetermined cause; at Lighthouse, Anderson photographed a live crown-of-thorns starfish beside freshly killed skeleton and recorded stark-white corymbose colonies as crown-of-thorns damage. No crown-of-thorns starfish were seen on the Ambon dives. On Halmahera in August 2026, the majority of dives recorded no bleaching, disease or crown-of-thorns, but a crown-of-thorns starfish was photographed at Merida Cavern, below a stark-white coral, and another at Mugia, Lelay Utara appeared to show active partial bleaching (read from the photographs) on part of its shallow plateau, single white or pale colonies turned up at several other sites, and debris was photographed at Maitara North and Pantai Falajawa. Old, coralline-bound mortality, standing dead staghorn, and rubble aprons are common on Halmahera. Human impacts were photographed at all three Ambon sites: gillnets at Air Manis (one, draped over bommies, held trapped small fish) and Rhino City, and bottles, fishing line, and PVC woven into the rubble at Laha-2. At Ambon one colony at Rhino City was possibly paling (one frame), a hammer coral was pale across its sun-exposed top (solar bleaching) at Laha-2, and Air Manis had a bleached leather-coral lobe, an advancing tissue-loss lesion on one foliose colony (not diagnosed), and a cushion star beside a mushroom coral with a possible feeding scar. Six sites carry a Coral Health Index (scale of zero to five; higher is healthier): Pulau Sebatang (5.00) and Sali Bay-Batu Mangga (4.75) on Halmahera, Lighthouse (4.75) in Banda, and the three Pulau Koon dives (4.75, 4.50, and 4.75).

What stands out is the life beyond the coral. Night dives off Ternate produced walking sharks (most likely the Halmahera walking shark) at Pantai Falajawa and ornate ghost pipefish at Cimitero, Tanjung Naraka had a large school of devil rays, Rhino City at Ambon had a Rhinopias and a ribbon eel, Laha-2 had harlequin shrimp, frogfish and seahorses, and hawksbill turtles were photographed at Shark Point and Goat Hall on Pulau Ai.