Saba - Tent Drift
Part of the regional summary: Saba
More about this place: Saba on Wikipedia
More info
Leeward Caribbean Islands (NOAA CRW virtual station)A drift along low volcanic boulders and a wall in Saba National Marine Park, dominated by barrel sponges and gorgonians, with only sparse small corals such as flower and brain corals. The wildlife steals the show: a resting nurse shark, a green turtle, a buried southern stingray, and a dense garden-eel colony, plus one invasive lionfish.
Een driftduik langs lage vulkanische rotsblokken en een wand in het Saba National Marine Park, gedomineerd door tonsponzen en gorgonen, met slechts weinig kleine koralen zoals bloem- en hersenkoralen. Het dierenleven steelt de show: een rustende verpleegsterhaai, een soepschildpad, een ingegraven zuidelijke pijlstaartrog en een dichte kolonie lintalen, plus één invasieve koraalduivel.
AI translation of this summary; the English is authoritative.
Three other CRD dive sites with their own pages within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.
These are unedited originals; edited versions will replace them.
This page shows 50 of the 82 photographs from this site, including every one the text cites.
30 of the 50 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.
Site description
Setting
Visibility is moderate, hazy in the deeper shots; fine sediment coats much of the pavement (e.g., Image 10).
General benthic features
Low-relief volcanic hardground, not carbonate framework: rounded boulders and pavement sheeted in turf and pink crustose coralline algae, grading into gray volcanic sand flats, with several frames along a vertical wall dropping into blue (e.g., Image 1, Image 6, Image 20, Image 54).
Sponges and gorgonians dominate. Barrel sponges (Xestospongia muta) appear in nearly every wide frame, salmon-pink to brick-red, some on the wall lip, with lavender and pink tube sponges, gray vase sponges, yellow encrusting sponges, black branching sponges, and red-brown excavating sponges (e.g., Image 13, Image 39, Image 42, Image 51).
Gorgonians include sea fans (Gorgonia), sea plumes bent over in current, sea rods, knobby golden colonies, and a free-hanging wire coral on the wall (e.g., Image 12, Image 15, Image 16).
Stony coral is sparse and small-colony. Most photographed is smooth flower coral (Eusmilia fastigiata): at least eight colonies with fluted corallites, cream with white septal rims and tan tissue lower on the corallite walls, the same in every colony photographed: this coral's usual color, not paling (e.g., Image 4, Image 21, Image 38).
Grooved brain coral (Diploria labyrinthiformis) recurs as small yellow-green heads, two side by side in one frame, some with whitened flanks (e.g., Image 31, Image 36, Image 47).
Mustard hill coral (Porites astreoides) forms olive to chartreuse encrusting plates and knobs (e.g., Image 14, Image 49, Image 52).
Agaricia plating colonies and one large plating star coral with a sharply bounded pale-orange patch sit in shaded recesses; a scarlet solitary cup coral appears twice (e.g., Image 44).
Coral cover
- Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
- Coral cover: 4.3% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 73 of Anderson's unedited photographs (20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.
- Frames were screened before scoring: open sand, mid-water, blown-out, and burst-duplicate frames, dive computers, topside, and diver shots, blue-light fluorescence, and macros were all removed.
Fish and other fauna
A resting nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum) over four frames; a southern stingray buried in rippled sand; a green turtle resting in the boulder field over four frames; a dense garden-eel colony on the sand plain; banded coral shrimp, a fairy basslet, and a fireworm in crevices; a giant anemone; schooling jacks, butterflyfish, and black durgon (e.g., Image 7, Image 8, Image 18, Image 23, Image 26, Image 43, Image 50).
One invasive lionfish (Pterois volitans) sits between pink tube sponges (e.g., Image 45).
Comparisons with other data
Klomp & Kooistra (2003) and Noble et al. (2013) surveyed this site (Tent Reef).
Dive record
Tent Reef drift, Saba National Marine Park, reviewed frame by frame from all 82 unedited stills of dive 1, 21 Feb 2026.
CV model comparison
More info
A few colony-focused photos raise the mean; the median is the typical photo. No computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images, so treat this as indicative rather than a measurement; it is revised as the methods improve.More info
DINOv3 and CoralSCOP were run on the same photos and are listed for comparison. No diver transect exists for this trip, so agreement between the rows is not accuracy, and no computer-vision method yet estimates coral cover accurately on new images; treat every row as indicative.| Method | Hard coral cover (%) | Photos (n) ± SE |
|---|---|---|
| In-house DINOv3 | 17.7 | n = 73 · SE 0.8 |
| CoralSCOP unedited | 21.2 | n = 73 · SE 1.6 |
| Claude | 4.3 | n = 73 · SE 0.9 |
The two computer-vision methods agree within 3.5 pp (17.7–21.2%) and read 13.4–16.9 pp above Claude's blind point count (4.3%); the headline is Claude's blind point count because no transect or manual count exists here.
See a more detailed, stand-alone version of this table.
Data & links
All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. Data are from Coral Reef Diagnostics.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.
References
- Klomp KD, Kooistra DJ (2003). A post-hurricane, rapid assessment of reefs in the windward Netherlands Antilles (stony corals, algae and fishes). Atoll Research Bulletin 496:404-437. DOI
- Noble MM, van Laake G, Berumen ML, Fulton CJ (2013). Community change within a Caribbean coral reef marine protected area following two decades of local management. PLOS ONE 8:e54069. DOI