Saudi Red Sea - unnamed site 2 (Al Qunfudah)

General benthic features

This one has more standing structure: elegant branching and arborescent Acropora colonies stand clear of the substrate, one of them a broad, waist-high candelabra a couple of meters across and stands of thinner staghorn thickets run along the reef top (e.g., Image 1, Image 2).

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Beneath and around them the pavement is a dense mosaic of plating and foliose colonies stacked in overlapping tiers, low domes, red, and purple encrusting sponges, and crustose coralline algae, with the reef top falling away as a steep terraced slope studded with table colonies into blue water (e.g., Image 3, Image 4).

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Coral cover

Published CoralNet point counts give 17% total coral cover (bleached included) against 8.5% algae, with 18.1% of coral tissue bleached at roughly 20.4 degree-heating-weeks - a manual point count from Anderson's own published paper, not a computer vision estimate. Also on record for this site: It carries the provenance of the paper it appears in and is not subject to the CoralSCOP/DINOv3 caveats applied elsewhere on this map.

Stressors

But the condition is the story: much of the branching framework in the frame is stark white or bone-pale, plating colonies show blanched leading edges, and the bright tan-and-cream corals stand in sharp contrast to those still fully pigmented. No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores evident.

Fish and other fauna

Snapper and small damselfish move over the top.

Comparisons with other data

No prior survey data from this site. If you would like to share yours, please email us.

Dive record

The second unnamed Al Qunfudah reef, a few hundred meters from the first and surveyed the same day, 30 August 2024, with Al Qunfudah Diver.