Turks and Caicos - Brandywine

Setting

Brandywine is a wall site off West Caicos, Turks and Caicos, dived three times from the Turks & Caicos Explorer II liveaboard on 2 August 2022 (dives 13-15), the last of them after dark. It is a wall where corals grow packed right to the crest (boulder star, brain, and mounding corals with red encrusting sponge and purple sea rods), leaving little bare sand compared to nearby sites. Above the drop-off, low reef spurs run out toward the wall, and at the foot of the reef a white sand plateau holds isolated coral heads, purple sea rods, and sponges (e.g., Image 2, Image 34).

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The wall itself is a steep spur-and-buttress face that falls into deep blue water, with living reef continuing over the lip (e.g., Image 8).

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General benthic features

The hardbottom community was a dense mix of sponges, sea plumes, sea rods, and scattered hard corals (e.g., Image 1, Image 3).

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Plating corals were among the most photographed colonies, including large stacked and shingled foliose colonies, some spiraling upward in tiers (e.g., Image 9, Image 40).

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One large lobed plating colony on the wall crest was pale lavender-gray and flecked with dark spots (e.g., Image 18).

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Symmetrical and grooved brain corals sat on the pavement among red encrusting growth (e.g., Image 56).

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One knoll was capped by a dense thicket of finger-like branching coral (e.g., Image 22).

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Between colonies, the dominant surface in most benthic frames was eroded pavement mottled with coralline crusts, turf, and red encrusting sponge (e.g., Image 23).

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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 94 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

Old mortality was the largest structural signal, with broad stretches of pavement strewn with loose, pale, algae-filmed fragments of dead branching coral that had been fouled long ago rather than freshly killed (e.g., Image 37, Image 55).

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Active tissue loss was photographed on several colonies. Two plating colonies photographed together each showed white, freshly exposed skeleton along one margin with intact brown tissue behind it, and another brown plate had a pale crescent between living tissue and a turf-covered dead patch (e.g., Image 12, Image 25).

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An olive mounding colony had lost its upper portion to turf, with a paler band of tissue along the boundary (e.g., Image 4).

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These are recorded as observations; no disease was diagnosed in the field, and lesion identification from photographs alone is not reliable. One small, knobby massive colony, roughly a hand's width across, was completely bleached white against a dark turf background (e.g., Image 10).

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It was a single isolated colony rather than a site-wide signal, and tissue color elsewhere in the set was normal brown, olive, yellow, and green. Typical recent thermal stress in the Bahamian ecoregion is a mean annual maximum of 9.1°C-weeks (Degree Heating Weeks, 2021-2025, NOAA Coral Reef Watch). No corallivores evident.

Fish and other fauna

Caribbean reef sharks stack up along the wall face in numbers, and the photographs bear this out, with three animals cruising the wall together, pairs patrolling the drop-off, and single sharks passing close over the reef face (e.g., Image 28, Image 44, Image 54).

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Another was silhouetted against the surface (e.g., Image 50).

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French angelfish and green morays work the reef structure, and a French angelfish was photographed beside a knoll of lobed, orange-brown mounding colonies and purple sea rods on the sand (e.g., Image 13).

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A large green moray was caught swimming free across open pavement in daylight rather than holed up (e.g., Image 46).

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A large grouper with pale saddle blotches on a dark body rested on the pavement, and a heavily black-spotted grouper-type fish sat on open sand between tube sponges (e.g., Image 24, Image 43).

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Giant anemones were a recurring subject, including a red-columned individual with pale tentacles shot at very close range and one with lavender-tipped tentacles beside a mounding coral (e.g., Image 7, Image 21).

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A spiny lobster sheltered under a ledge with its antennae extended (e.g., Image 52).

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On the night dive, an octopus hunted among purple rope sponges, a slipper lobster crawled in the open, and a large sea cucumber lay on the sand plateau (e.g., Image 5, Image 6, Image 35).

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Comparisons with other data

The nearest earlier survey, at Reef Check's Spanish Anchor station 1.17 km away, recorded 20.0% hard coral in August 2007, 8.6 percentage points above this site's figure.

Dive record

The two afternoon dives entered the water at 14:02 and 16:31 and reached 26.2 m and 28.3 m over 64 and 63 minutes, and the night dive entered at 20:08 and reached 17.4 m over 50 minutes, all in 28.3°C water.