Coral Cover: Red Sea

Shaded value = in the CV mean (shade deepens with cover) Gray italic = shown for comparison but left out of the CV mean: the gold standard (the reference value) and the manually annotated in CoralNet CoralNet benchmark annotations (reference values, not models), Coralscapes (not trusted), and any value that reuses the reference's own data n = frames behind the value — = not run or not applicable (see each region's notes) Site names and method names link out (new tab)

Coral Cover: Red Sea - Egypt 2024

11 sites · 1,966 photos

Gold standard = each site's own published CoralNet point count (Environments 12:248, Appendix A; most frames annotated by CoralNet's AI, trained and checked by the author). 159 photos manually scored (via CoralNet) for the benchmark. CoralSCOP ran on both edited and unedited photos (separate columns).

Site	Date	Headline (site page)	Claude	Gold standard	Benchmark subset (manual CoralNet; not the gold standard)	DINOv3	Coralscapes v1	Coralscapes v2	CoralSCOP unedited	CoralSCOP edited	Mean ± SD of CV	Range
Marsa Nakari-North (Marsa Nakari)	2024-09-20	23%published point count	23^fn=172	23^an=195	—	—	too few photos (n=9)^b,c,l	17^i,cn=186	28^d,en=205	29^d,kn=188	27 ± 3.5	23–29
Nakari House Reef-South (Marsa Nakari)	2024-09-20	25%published point count	24^fn=103	25^an=102	23^gn=30	46^hn=30	10^b,cn=45	18^i,cn=108	26^d,en=119	28^d,k,jn=107	31 ± 10.2	24–46
Habili El Ghadeer (Marsa Nakari)	2024-09-21	13%published point count	16^fn=147	13^an=161	—	—	too few photos (n=9)^b,c,l	15^i,cn=148	24^d,en=168	24^d,kn=148	21 ± 4.3	16–24
Om Halhala (Marsa Nakari)	2024-09-21	24%published point count	29^fn=206	24^an=216	—	—	13^b,cn=12	19^i,cn=206	30^d,en=221	30^d,k,jn=200	30 ± 0.7	29–30
Gazella Reef (Wadi Lahami)	2024-09-22	17%published point count	18^fn=204	17^an=214	23^gn=30	46^hn=30	12^b,cn=36	11^i,cn=205	22^d,e,jn=222	22^d,kn=208	27 ± 13.0	18–46
Habili Daisy (Wadi Lahami)	2024-09-22	23%published point count	18^fn=50	23^an=52	—	—	12^b,cn=58	too few photos (n=8)^i,c,l	24^d,en=58	too few photos (n=8)^d,k,l	21 ± 4.0	18–24
Shabrour-north (Wadi Lahami)	2024-09-22	24%published point count	21^fn=92	24^an=100	24^gn=99	45^hn=99	16^b,cn=101	18^i,cn=94	28^d,en=108	30^d,k,jn=74	31 ± 10.1	21–45
Shabrour-south (Wadi Lahami)	2024-09-22–23	25%published point count	24^fn=221	25^an=223	—	—	11^b,cn=38	19^i,cn=128	27^d,e,jn=241	29^d,kn=129	27 ± 2.7	24–29
Abu Galawa-small (Wadi Lahami)	2024-09-23	21%published point count	26^fn=188	21^an=192	—	—	15^b,cn=203	—	23^d,en=203	—	24 ± 1.9	23–26
Habili Gazella (Wadi Lahami)	2024-09-23	18%published point count	19^fn=176	18^an=181	—	—	11^b,cn=191	—	22^d,e,jn=190	—	21 ± 1.8	19–22
Salah (Wadi Lahami)	2024-09-23	28%published point count	28^fn=212	28^an=218	—	—	19^b,cn=231	—	29^d,en=231	—	29 ± 0.6	28–29
All sites (unweighted mean)		—	22	22	—	—	—	—	26	—	24 ± 2.4	22–26

Notes for Red Sea - Egypt 2024 (16)

[a] Gold = this site's own published CoralNet point count by the author (Mayfield 2025, Environments 12:248, Appendix A; n = photos; most frames annotated by CoralNet's AI, trained and checked by the author), the value the site page, report card, and map pop-up print. The paper's Table 4 also gives AREA means: Wadi Lahami 22% (n=1180); Marsa Nakari 21% (n=674).
[b] Coralscapes v1 on UNEDITED frames.
[c] Coralscapes (v1 EPFL-ECEO/coralscapes-vit-b-dpt; v2 coralscapesv2-dinov3-vitb-lora-dpt) is not considered reliable for these photos: shown, never averaged. Area fraction, not a point count.
[d] CoralSCOP = per-frame sum of colony-mask area fractions (zero-filled; overlapping masks double-count), averaged over frames with an ok row. Area index, not a point count: denominator differs from any point-count reference. It is also unstable frame to frame (the same subject has scored 94.1% in one photo and 23.3% in another), and the mask sum overstates cover most on the healthiest reefs.
[e] CoralSCOP full-set run, Egypt unedited frames (for dives 58-62, the AI-processed photos), finished (1,966 of 1,969 frames scored; 3 could not be scored: failed, unreadable or skipped at the memory cap).
[f] Claude = the full-set blind point count (EDITED, AI-processed where no edit exists; 20 pts, 7-call, (HC+BL)/(20 − WATER − FISH − OBST)), the value the site pages show.
[g] Separate benchmark, not a second gold value: the author's own CoralNet points on the benchmark frames (746 frames), (30 − WATER − FISH − DVR), unknown points kept (Red Sea paper Section 2.2), recomputed per frame.
[h] DINOv3 (fine-tuned) point predictions at the author's CoralNet points on the benchmark frames; hard coral / (points − WATER − FISH − DVR by reference label). No full-set DINOv3 run exists.
[i] Coralscapes v2 on EDITED frames.
[j] Run finished at this site; n leaves out the frame(s) CoralSCOP could not score (mask generation failed, unreadable file, or skipped at the runner's memory cap), so n is below the site's frame count. Not partial.
[k] CoralSCOP full-set run, EDITED frames, finished (1,062 of 1,090 frames scored; 28 could not be scored: failed, unreadable or skipped at the memory cap).
[l] Too few photos (under 10) at this site for a value: not shown and not averaged (photo-count rule: 10 or more photos for a value, 20 or more for a confident one).
Mean/Range: Mean ± SD and Range are over the CV cells that enter the mean (CoralNet where independent, DINOv3, CoralSCOP unedited/edited, Claude). Gold standard, frames manually annotated in CoralNet, Coralscapes and same-measurement cells are shown in gray italic but never averaged.
Headline (site page): the coral-cover figure the site's page, report card and map pop-up print, with its method; it is never averaged into the CV mean.
Methods: Claude (Anthropic); DINOv3 (Meta; paper; used here as the frozen backbone of the in-house classifier); Coralscapes v1 and v2 (EPFL-ECEO; dataset paper, code); CoralSCOP (Zheng et al., CVPR 2024); CoralNet.
Sites: names drop the region prefix (hover for the full name) and link to the site's CRD page, or to the regional summary page where the site has none. Date = survey date from the map pins (first–last visit); sites are listed earliest first, undated sites last.

All regions