Turks and Caicos - Boat Cove

Setting

The habitat is a series of coral-and-sponge-encrusted rock mounds and patch reefs separated by white sand channels, rather than a continuous reef front (e.g., Image 2, Image 12).

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Visibility varied from a hazy blue mid-water background to clear, well-lit close-range framing on the mounds themselves; apparent depth is consistent with the dive log's ~27-29 m maxima (e.g., Image 50).

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General benthic features

Massive boulder/starlet corals dominate the mounds, including large purple-gray colonies consistent with Orbicella and a ridged brain coral consistent with Pseudodiploria; low finger-coral thickets consistent with Porites porites or Madracis form dense clusters on several mound tops, and lettuce/plate corals with red speckled tissue occupy shaded ledges alongside a small solitary flower-type coral polyp (e.g., Image 4, Image 10, Image 13, Image 31).

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Sponges are abundant and diverse: large dark barrel sponges, an orange elephant-ear sponge, red-orange encrusting sponge crusts, a purple branching rope/candelabrum sponge, a black ball sponge, and clusters of small yellow tube sponges (e.g., Image 1, Image 9, Image 11, Image 14, Image 28).

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Gorgonians (sea plumes, sea rods, and low sea fans) and feather-duster worms fill the gaps between coral heads (e.g., Image 47).

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Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 11% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 74 of Anderson's edited photographs (the mean of the two dives' means; 20 points per photo; water, fish, and obstructions excluded). Other computer-vision methods are listed in the method table.

Stressors

One boulder coral head shows a distinct rounded white patch of bare skeleton amid otherwise healthy brown tissue — this reads as either partial bleaching or an old localized mortality scar rather than active disease and is called out below rather than assumed (e.g., Image 17).

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No corallivores, and no widespread bleaching or disease, were seen elsewhere in the sample.

Fish and other fauna

Fauna recorded directly in the frames reviewed: a spiny lobster sheltering at the base of a sponge-coral mound, a Caribbean reef shark cruising over open sand near a descending diver, a well-camouflaged flounder lying flat on the sand, a whitespotted filefish near a barrel sponge, and dense schools of French/bluestriped grunts moving through the coral-and-sponge mounds (e.g., Image 3, Image 7, Image 26, Image 43).

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Comparisons with other data

No other surveys have been conducted at this site to date. Within 5 km, four independent stations (Reef Check and XL Catlin Seaview Survey) recorded 1.9–20% hard coral cover between 2007 and 2013; the nearest, Reef Check at Boat Cove, 0.05 km away, read 17% in 2007.

Dive record

West Caicos, Boat Cove — two dives on 2022-08-04 from the Turks & Caicos Explorer II liveaboard.

Other notes

Man-made objects in frame are limited to the divers, their gear, and one close-up of a dive computer worn on the wrist; a pre-dive briefing whiteboard photo (listing expected fauna) is not itself reef content. Massive boulder/starlet corals dominate the mounds, including large purple-gray colonies consistent with Orbicella and a ridged brain coral consistent with Pseudodiploria; low finger-coral thickets consistent with Porites or Madracis form dense clusters on several mound tops, and lettuce/plate corals with red speckled tissue occupy shaded ledges alongside a small solitary flower-type coral polyp (e.g., Image 4, Image 10, Image 13, Image 31).