Saudi Red Sea - Al Fasmah (Yanbu)

Setting

The structure is a shallow reef complex cut by gullies and canyons — one frame looks up a narrow blue channel between two vertical coral-covered walls, chromis stacked through it.

General benthic features

The reef top is genuinely rich and, in the shallow strobe-lit frames, spectacularly colored: cobalt and powder-blue digitate Acropora, apricot and salmon corymbose Acropora, magenta and lilac pocilloporids, yellow-green Turbinaria-type plates, mustard Millepora-type fire coral, tan and cream knobby Porites, olive faviids, and orange encrusting sponge, packed close over coralline-crusted rock (e.g., Image 1, Image 3, Image 4).

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A large apricot corymbose Acropora table with a school of green chromis over it is the single best-composed frame of the dive (e.g., Image 2).

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Coral cover

Coral cover is 22.0% ± 12.2 across 116 photographs, quoted verbatim from Mayfield, A.B. (2025) Environments 12:248 — Red Sea 2023-24 bleaching; CoralNet point annotation, Appendix A — a manual, diver-annotated CoralNet point count from Anderson's own published work, not a computer vision output and not recomputed here. Note that the standard deviation here (12.2) is the tightest of the Saudi sites in this set: frame to frame, this reef is unusually consistent.

Stressors

Condition: the reef was in the 2023 thermal-stress event when photographed, and white colonies appear repeatedly.

Comparisons with other data

A published figure above about 70% usually reflects the surveyors choosing the most coral-rich patch, so read it as a best-patch number rather than a site mean.

Dive record

A late-morning dive to 15 m on 16 September 2023 with Umluj Dive Center — the second dive of the Yanbu day that began at Alrass Alakhdar.

Other notes

Anderson's folder spells it "Alfasmah"; the site record carries it as Al Fasmah. See flags.