Coral Reef Diagnostics

Taiwan - Hsiao Liouchiou Island (north shore)

Reef Check Foundation
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Part of the regional summaries: Taiwan (mainland + offshore islands) and Taiwan

05
Coral Health Index: TBD
Country
Taiwan
Date(s) visited
2008-08-29
Coordinates
22.3558, 120.3809
Approximate position.
Coral cover
19%
nearest station surveyed in the last 10 years, not this site: Reef Check, Beauty Cave station, mean of 2 surveys (5 m and 10 m), 2019-10-30, 0.97 km away
Observations
artificial structure
Heat stress
Most recent heat load record
28.5°C0.8°C-weeks
26 Oct 2026 · Bleaching Watch
5-year thermal stress load
5-year mean max. degree heating weeks (DHW)
12.6°C-weeksi
2021–2025
NOAA Coral Reef Watch — Southern Taiwan virtual station
i 5-year mean max. DHW is the mean of the annual maximum DHWs over the five complete years named above, not conditions today.
More infoSouthern Taiwan (NOAA CRW virtual station)
Site summary
Read this summary in:

Three fieldwork dives here in 2008 — checking an artificial reef and swapping settlement tiles — found the water murky from run-off but surprisingly nice coral. No coral-cover measurement of its own was taken; Reef Check's closest station, 0.35 km away, recorded 10% hard coral in 2009, and a second station of the same name, 0.97 km away, recorded 19% in 2019.

Max. depth dived
23.8 m
Sea surface temp. (satellite)
28.9°C
satellite sea surface temperature (SST) on the survey date (NOAA Coral Reef Watch, Southern Taiwan), not an in-water reading; it is the warmest-pixel (90th percentile) reading in the station area and can run 1–1.5°C above the reef

Seven independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.

Site description

Setting

The contemporaneous log notes water very murky from Kaohsiung-area run-off but surprisingly nice coral, and good soft coral with about 30 ft of visibility on the last dive.

Coral cover

Comparisons with other data

The closest Reef Check site is a station named Beauty Cave, 0.35 km from this approximate pin; its only survey date, 1 September 2009, recorded 10% hard coral (mean of 2 surveys, 5 m and 10 m; Reef Check data, a separate station, not a survey of this site). A second Reef Check station, also named Beauty Cave, lies 0.97 km away; its latest survey, on 30 October 2019, recorded 19% hard coral (mean of the 5 m and 10 m surveys), the value shown in the coral-cover tile.

Dive record

Three dives here on 29 August 2008, to 23.8 m, 10.1 m and 7.9 m. The first checked on the status of an artificial reef and turned up an octopus and a turtle; the third swapped out settlement tiles — so this was fieldwork, not sightseeing.

No underwater photographs from this site are on file.

Independent surveys nearby

Hard coral cover over time — every independent station within 5 km. Programs are shown separately because they use different methods at different stations; the lines are not one comparable series.
0%15%30%45%60%200920142019Reef Check 2009: 10%Reef Check 2009: 10%Reef Check 2009: 27%Reef Check 2010: 6.9%Reef Check 2010: 9.4%Reef Check 2010: 38%Reef Check 2014: 19%Reef Check 2014: 25%Reef Check 2014: 42%Reef Check 2015: 12%Reef Check 2015: 32%Reef Check 2015: 51%Reef Check 2016: 7.2%Reef Check 2016: 7.5%Reef Check 2016: 23%Reef Check 2017: 10%Reef Check 2017: 13%Reef Check 2017: 26%Reef Check 2018: 8.4%Reef Check 2018: 8.4%Reef Check 2018: 25%Reef Check 2019: 6.6%Reef Check 2019: 11%Reef Check 2019: 19%Year-averaged across all programs: no detectable trend (-0.44 pp per year, not separable from zero; 8 years)
Reef CheckYear-average (no detectable trend)

Within 5 km, 7 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 48 surveys between 2009 and 2019. Of the 4 stations surveyed in more than one year, 3 declined (by 8.0–31 points) and 1 increased (by 9.6 points) between their first and latest surveys. Two stations share the longest span (2010–2019); one, Beauty Cave (Reef Check, 0.97 km away), went from 9.4% in 2010 (mean of 2 surveys) to 19% in 2019 (mean of 2 surveys). The most recent nearby survey is from 2019, so these values predate recent heat stress.

Collected by other programs using different methods (Reef Check uses point-intercept transects), so these are context for the figures above, not a like-for-like comparison. Where a station was surveyed more than once, the cell shows either the range of its values or, as a single value, the mean of surveys made in one year. Station names are not dive-site names.

Independent survey data near this site
AgencySite / locationDateHard coral cover (%)Distance
Reef CheckBeauty Cave200910%, mean of 2 surveys (5 m and 10 m)0.35 km
Reef CheckGeban Bay200910%, mean of 2 surveys (5 m and 14 m)2.56 km
Reef CheckHoushi Fringing Reef2009–201713–51% (range of yearly means; 8 surveys)3.56 km
Reef CheckBeauty Cave2010–20199.4–32% (range of yearly means; 14 surveys)0.97 km
Reef CheckGeban Bay20106.9%, mean of 2 surveys (5 m and 10 m)3.11 km
Reef CheckHoushi2010–20196.6–38% (range of yearly means; 8 surveys)3.97 km
Reef CheckYuchengwei2014–20197.5–19% (range of yearly means; 12 surveys)1.17 km

Data & links

Data on this page are from Coral Reef Diagnostics (the dive record) and the organizations named in the data sources above; Coral Reef Diagnostics has no coral cover estimate of its own at this site.

© Coral Reef Diagnostics.