There are some astonishingly nice reefs to be found all along Oman’s diverse coastlines, and I didn’t even go to the (supposedly) most epic region: Musandam.
Oman site 1: Novice Bay (2024-05-20) Oman site 2: Cave Site (2024-05-20) Oman site 3: Jissah Point (2024-05-21)
Lowercase letter superscripts in the right-most column denote Tukey’s post-hoc differences in coral cover.
A reef in Oman’s Daymaniyat Islands
Oman site 4: Cat Island (2024-05-21) Oman site 5: Daymaniyat site 1 (2024-05-25) Oman site 6: Daymaniyat site 2 (2024-05-25) Oman site 7: Daymaniyat site 3 (2024-05-25)
Around 700 images were taken of these reefs, of which 660 were analyzed via the CoralNet AI to estimate coral cover (%). I manually annotated 260 of them, at which point the AI’s accuracy (85%) was deemed satisfactory to annotate the remaining images automatically.
In addition to the edited photos on my Adobe Portfolio (see links above.), they can also be downloaded directly from CoralNet (open access) under accession#6625.
From the 660 images that passed quality control, I used CoralNet to estimate live coral cover; all data can be found here.
An example of an image undergoing annotation in CoralNet (UCSD, USA).
Surveys were conducted in mid-May of 2024, at which point hypothesized thermal stress (as degree-heating weeks [DHWs]) was relatively low. Data were obtained from NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch.
A breakdown of image annotations. Note that about 90% of each image, on average, comprised the benthos (the remaining ~10% being water & fish).
Live coral cover across the seven survey sites. The region-wide mean was ~40%.
Here are the same data portrayed another way, with the error bars signifying standard deviation and the letters above them representing Tukey’s post-hoc differences (as an ANOVA determined a statistically significant effect of site on coral cover; p<0.01)
Declining coral cover in the Gulf of Oman over a 20-year period. The blue shading about the spline represents 95% confidence and varies widely due to the non-standardized nature of the surveys.