Recent and rapid reef recovery around Koh Phangan Island, Gulf of Thailand, driven by plate-like hard corals.

Mass bleaching events and local anthropogenic influences have changed the benthic communities of many coral reefs with pronounced spatial differences that are linked to resilience patterns. The Gulf of Thailand is an under-investigated region with only few existing datasets containing long-term developments of coral reef communities using the same method at fixed sites. We thus analyzed benthic community data from seven reefs surrounding the island of Koh Phangan collected between 2014 and 2022.