This data package describes three data files associated with an experimental removal of dead coral following a marine heatwave that caused substantial bleaching-induced coral mortality in 2019 on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. Two of the datasets (Regions_master.csv, and Algae point data.csv) were collected via the image analysis software TagLab, which uses AI-assisted image segmentation tools to measure three-dimensional surface areas of objects (in this case, live and dead coral colonies), as well as conduct point-counts to estimate percent cover of other benthic organisms (like marine macroalgae) in photomosaics. The third dataset (Recruit-counts_2023.csv) was collected in the field on SCUBA to measure the density of coral too small to be detected in the photomosaics that had recruited in each experimental treatment in the final year of the experiment. The experiment lasted four years, from 2019-2023. These data were used for analyses in Kopecky et al. 2025, published in Ecological Applications (https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70077).