Turks and Caicos - Shark Hotel

Setting

Shark Hotel is the wall dive of this Northwest Point group, and the frames separate cleanly into four zones (e.g., Image 5, Image 11, Image 19, Image 55).

5111955

General benthic features

The wall itself is near-vertical and mostly austere: turf- and coralline-crusted rock with sparse coral (e.g., Image 36, Image 41), a dark vertical slot where the chimney breaks the face, and overhangs whose ceilings are painted pink with crustose coralline algae (e.g., Image 49, Image 53) and red rope sponges (e.g., Image 14).

3641495314

The upper wall carries the best coral - broad fields of stacked Agaricia-type plates and mauve Montastraea cavernosa plates, tier on tier (e.g., Image 3, Image 22, Image 27, Image 30, Image 43).

322273043

The reef top above is the opposite: wide, low-relief pavement, largely dead, and crusted, in places carpeted in green turf (e.g., Image 4, Image 10, Image 24).

41024

Below the wall a sand terrace runs out flat, punctuated by isolated limestone columns (e.g., Image 38, Image 45) and mushroom-shaped undercut remnants two meters high (e.g., Image 51, Image 54), brown barrel sponges (Xestospongia muta) (e.g., Image 17, Image 47), tube sponges, sea rods, and purple sea plumes (e.g., Image 15, Image 25, Image 33).

384551541747152533

Corals identified (e.g., Image 1, Image 34, Image 46): plating and knobby Orbicella, Montastraea cavernosa as domes, columns, and plates, Agaricia plates, Porites astreoides mounds (e.g., Image 16, Image 39, Image 50), thick-fingered Porites porites (e.g., Image 56), Siderastrea-type domes, a clean Pseudodiploria strigosa, meandroid brains of the Colpophyllia/Diploria labyrinthiformis group (e.g., Image 28, Image 35), and fleshy Mussa- or Isophyllia-type polyps.

13446163950562835

The night frames are all macro: M. cavernosa, Orbicella, Porites porites, and meandroid brains with polyps and tentacles fully extended (e.g., Image 6), plus channel clinging crabs on the sand (e.g., Image 7) and orange brittle stars threading the colonies.

67

Coral cover

• Reference: Claude CV point count (this site's photos)
• Coral cover: 16% — a blind Claude computer-vision point count of 44 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

Condition: roughly a dozen day frames show active tissue loss - bright bands and patches of freshly bared skeleton on Orbicella plates and on M. cavernosa, sometimes creamy white and unfouled (e.g., Image 18, Image 26), sometimes with turf already established behind the front (e.g., Image 40, Image 44).

18264044

One down-shot catches ten or more small colonies each carrying its own white lesion. Standing dead skeleton is everywhere on the pavement (e.g., Image 21).

21

No corallivores evident.

Fish and other fauna

Fauna was the richest of this group: Caribbean reef sharks (Carcharhinus perezi) in five frames, four cruising low over the sand terrace (e.g., Image 8, Image 9); two southern stingrays; two great barracuda (e.g., Image 13); schoolmaster snapper and grunt schools; black durgon, blue chromis, creole wrasse, blue tang; a peacock flounder (e.g., Image 29); three spiny lobsters under ledges.

891329

Comparisons with other data

Shark Hotel (Northwest Point / Columbus Landfall Marine Park, Providenciales) was dived from the Turks & Caicos Explorer II liveaboard on 31 July 2022. A wall dive starting around 40ft where a chimney swim-through drops to 80ft and exits back onto the wall face near 130ft.

Other notes

Corals identified: plating and knobby Orbicella, Montastraea cavernosa as domes, columns, and plates, Agaricia plates, Porites astreoides mounds, thick-fingered Porites, Siderastrea-type domes, a clean Pseudodiploria strigosa, meandroid brains of the Colpophyllia/Diploria labyrinthiformis group, and fleshy Mussa- or Isophyllia-type polyps (e.g., Image 1, Image 19, Image 28, Image 33, Image 39).