N. GBR - Blue (AU116154)

Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation — Global Reef Expedition

Part of the regional summaries: Australia (GBR) - Far North: Blue stations (Habitat Protection Zone reefs) and Australia (GBR)

Country

Australia

Survey date(s)

2014-09-30

Coordinates

-13.5176, 144.0656

Coral cover

53%

Benthic transects+photo-quadrats

Observations

not yet tagged for this site

Heat stress

Today’s heat load

25.2°C 0.0°C-weeks

3 Oct 2026 · No heat stress

5-year thermal stress load

5-year mean max. degree heating weeks (DHW)

11.1°C-weeksⁱ

2021–2025

NOAA Coral Reef Watch — Far Northern GBR virtual station

i 5-year mean max. DHW is the mean of the annual maximum DHWs over the five complete years named above, not conditions today.

More info

Far Northern GBR (NOAA CRW virtual station)

Survey depth (expedition team)

7 m

Living Oceans Foundation (LOF) benthic survey depth; no dive by Anderson at this station

Sea surface temp. (satellite)

25.1°C

satellite sea surface temperature (SST) on the survey date (NOAA Coral Reef Watch, Far Northern GBR), not an in-water reading; it is the warmest-pixel (90th percentile) reading in the station area and can run 1–1.5°C above the reef

Two independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.

Seven other CRD dive sites within 5 km shown in orange — click a marker to open its page.

Site description

Setting

Global Reef Expedition station AU116154 on Unnamed Reef 116, far northern Great Barrier Reef (-13.5176, 144.0656), surveyed on 30 September 2014 and paired with AU116153.

Coral cover

Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
The in situ benthic transects recorded 53% live coral cover against a 31% algal fraction at a survey depth of 7.0 m.
Transect mean 58 ± 4.4% SE (n = 11 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is the expedition's station value (the headline weights each depth equally).

Stressors

Regional context, not an observation at this station: these surveys pre-date the 2016 mass bleaching by about eighteen months, and the far northern GBR was that event's epicenter. Thermal stress on this stretch now runs at a 5-year mean annual maximum of 11.1 degree heating weeks.

Comparisons with other data

No other surveys have been conducted at this site to date. Within 5 km, two XL Catlin Seaview Survey stations recorded 17–32% hard coral cover between 2012 and 2016; the nearest, XL Catlin Seaview Survey at transect 15023, 2.71 km away, read 26–32% between 2012 and 2016.

Nearby citizen-science imagery within 2 km (not a survey of this site, and not total coral cover):

Great Reef Census (citizen science, AI + volunteer image analysis): branching Acropora 8.0%, plating Acropora 24%, massive corals 18% of colonizable substrate, 22 images, 2024-11-20, 1.57 km.

The Great Reef Census scores three coral shapes only, so every other coral is left out, and its denominator is colonizable substrate (sand, water, and shadow excluded): these values are not hard coral cover and should not be added together or compared with the cover figures on this page. The photographs are taken by volunteer snorkelers 3–5 m above the reef. In the program's own validation (Lawson et al. 2025, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 197:814, doi:10.1007/s10661-025-14261-6, open access), each analysis method on its own differed from expert estimates by up to about 9.5 percentage points on average for these coral types (AI alone: plating Acropora −9.1 points; AI plus volunteers: branching Acropora +9.5 points); the program's “~99% accurate” figure is the average over about 8,000 images after choosing the better method for each coral type, and site values from fewer images carry more error. Sites with fewer than 40 images have fewer images than the 40–80 the method needs to estimate site-level values to within 5 percentage points. Source: Great Reef Census / Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef; Lawson et al. 2026, Limnology & Oceanography Letters, doi:10.1002/lol2.70168 (data CC BY-NC 4.0, doi:10.7910/DVN/KCULSD).

Independent surveys nearby

Within 5 km, 2 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 3 surveys between 2012 and 2016. The one station surveyed in more than one year changed by 7 points or less between its first and latest surveys, inside the 7-point method-noise floor (inconclusive). The longest record, transect 15023 (XL Catlin Seaview Survey, 2.71 km away), went from 32% in 2012 to 26% in 2016. The most recent nearby survey is from 2016, so these values predate recent heat stress. This site's own estimate (53%) is not compared with these surveys: none lies within 2 km.

Collected by other programs using different methods (the XL Catlin Seaview Survey uses photo-transects with automated image annotation), so these are context for the figures above, not a like-for-like comparison. Where a station was surveyed more than once, the cell shows either the range of its values or, as a single value, the mean of surveys made in one year. Station names are not dive-site names.

Independent survey data near this site
Agency	Site / location	Date	Hard coral cover (%)	Distance	Link
XL Catlin Seaview Survey	transect 15023	2012–2016	26–32% (2 surveys)	2.71 km	doi:10.14264/uql.2019.930
XL Catlin Seaview Survey	transect 15022	2016	17%	4.54 km	doi:10.14264/uql.2019.930

Data & links

Data are from the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation Global Reef Expedition, Coral Reef Diagnostics, and the organizations named in the data sources above.