N. GBR - Blue (AU4335)

Setting

This site sits in a Habitat Protection (Blue) Zone, where line fishing is permitted.

General benthic features

Branching Echinopora and massive poritids formed the backbone of what remained, and recruitment was unusually strong, with 10-15 species settling onto old dead coral skeletons (e.g., Image 5).

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Shallower water (2-3 m) looked considerably healthier, with big Diploastrea and Platygyra colonies. Porites was the most common coral genus on this station's transects (12% of the benthos), followed by Favia and Lobophyllia (1.3% each), Pavona (1.0%), Echinopora (0.8%), and Acanthastrea, Fungia, Leptastrea, and Pectinia (0.7% each); bare substrate covered 21%, behind turf (26%), the largest non-coral class. Among the algal classes on this station's transects, turf (26%) led, followed by sediment-laden turf (14%) and macroalgae (8.2%).

Coral cover

• Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
• Coral cover measured 23% amid the same murky, silty water (3-4 m visibility) as the day's earlier dives.
• Transect mean 23 ± 3.5% SE (n = 6 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is the expedition's station value.

Stressors

Two frames show crown-of-thorns starfish on rubble and dead branching framework (e.g., Image 2, Image 4).

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Comparisons with other data

No prior survey data from this site. If you would like to share yours, please email us.

Dive record

The third dive of 8 September 2014 on this unnamed reef was done at low tide, with nearby reef flats poking above the surface. Anderson's notes put the crown-of-thorns starfish at about 30 on the site (29 or more), two of them on one transect; one was eating (and had eaten) a Leptoseris coral "garden," and some Millepora fire coral was being eaten by the starfish.