Assessment of coral reefs damaged due to MV Pazifik ran aground in the Sape Strait using an aerial photography approach and species distribution modeling

Abstract

Indonesia as an archipelagic country has a high biodiversity of coral reefs but is very vulnerable to various threats, one of the causes of damage to coral reefs is by ship aground. The damage causes minor injuries to the degradation of the reef structure. The location of the grounding sometimes on the small islands with calm currents, but sometimes in straits with strong currents. However, the assessment must be carried out, so it is necessary to develop an approach to assessing that. The purpose of this study is to assess the damage of coral reefs, to quantify the extent of damage, and identify species of corals affected. The observation used ground truth (underwater photo transect), aerial photography, machine learning, and species distribution modeling. The results obtained from aerial photography show that the MV Pazifik has damage to coral reefs reaching 613.63 m2. Based on the coral genera distribution model, it was found 35–55 genera (control location), while at the ship aground, were found 3–5 genera. Therefore, the control location is a coral reef ecosystem that is dominated by corals, while at the ship aground it can be the habitat for several hard coral genera.