Recovery of coral cover on inshore fringing reefs following mass coral bleaching in the Philippines

The management of human impacts on coral reefs in Southeast Asia is hampered by a shortage of site-specific, long-term information. At the center of coral biodiversity, the reefs in Taytay Bay in the northwestern Sulu Sea lost about a third of their coral cover during the 2010 thermal event. Annual recovery rates of coral cover averaged 2.8% over the following nine years, with considerable variation (0–7.3% per year) among reefs within 17 km. Macro-algal cover and coral composition accounted for some of the differences in recovery rates among reefs. However, the relatively fast recovery of one reef that has slow-growing corals, low grazer density, and high macro-algal cover defy expectations and may be from remnant, cryptic tissue of Porites.