Tiếng Việt
Please watch a video in which we were following a butterfly fish to discover a part of the Lettuce coral garden at Half-moon Reef – one of the most amazing snorkeling & diving site in Phu Quoc Island.
I. LOCATION OF LETTUCE CORAL GARDEN
Half-moon coral reefs is one of the most diversified coral reefs in Phu Quoc Island (Phu Quoc Island is one of the top snorkeling & diving site in whole Vietnam). There are anemone garden and coral-covered cliffs, coral-covered canyons and especially massive honeycomb corals.
When we dive and snorkel at the Half-moon coral reef, we find different layers of corals depending on the depth ranges.. In this post, we would like to show you a healthy Lettuce Coral (Genus Montipora) garden that we found at the depth of 1.5 – 3m on our snorkeling trip to explore Phu Quoc Half-moon reef.
II. FEATURES OF LETTUCE CORAL (Echinopora lamellosa)
Lettece (Echinopora lamellosa) grows in shallow waters, at 5mm per year. Lettuce Coral Colonies are usually thin leaves. Calices are 3 to 6 mm in diameter, and in general are spaced about a corallite diameter apart. Costae run between septa and are beaded. The primary septa are markedly exserted, and bear paliform lobes.
The Lettuce Coral Garden we found at Half-moon reef grows very close to the shore of Half-moon reef, it is generally shore-attached and shallowly submerged on a submarine slope of the Half-moon coral reef, the area of the Lettuce Coral Garden is very large around 50 – 60 sq meter, corals are healthy and developing in good status. The Lettuce Coral Garden is surrounded by a colony of Pillar and Plate corals and some table corals.
In some periods of rough seas, we see small blue fish come here to take shelter making whole the garden colorful and vivid with hundreds of thousands of small fish swimming, staying there.
Another interesting thing we find in the Lettuce Coral Garden is that there is a massive rock there splitting the garden into 2 parts (submarine slope and submarine canyon).
When you do snorkeling, you swim from the submarine slope to the rock and keep swimming into a small submarine canyon where Lettuce corals dominate too.
Right beside the submarine slope the depth becomes deeper with a depth of around 6 – 7m, you will see carpet corals and anemone. When do snorkeling here, take care yourself as it grow close to the shore thereby you could get cut by rock oysters.
Join our snorkeling & diving trips in exploring hidden coral reefs in Phu Quoc Island.
Latest Update on July 28 2022:
After just 2 month since the first documentary of the Lettuce Coral Garden, we sadly saw a wide dead of lettuce corals here, everything seem to be disappear, surrounding corals are also heavily damaged may be by some anchors. We are keep tracking what was happening.