N. GBR - Blue (AUHK44)

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)

2014-09-10

Coordinates

-14.4757, 145.5018

Coral cover

33%

Benthic transects+photo-quadrats

Observations

not yet tagged for this site

Heat stress

Today’s heat load

24.8°C 0.0°C-weeks

3 Oct 2026 · No heat stress

5-year thermal stress load

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

7.8°C-weeksⁱ

2021–2025

NOAA Coral Reef Watch — 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

Northern GBR (NOAA CRW virtual station)

Survey depth (expedition team)

6.5 m

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

Sea surface temp. (satellite)

24.8°C

satellite sea surface temperature (SST) on the survey date (NOAA Coral Reef Watch, 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

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

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

🗺 Detailed map of the Global Reef Expedition dive sites, Yonge, Hicks, and Carter Reefs, northern Great Barrier Reef (Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation; opens in a new window)

Site description

Setting

Global Reef Expedition station AUHK44 on Hicks Reef, northern Great Barrier Reef (-14.4757, 145.5018), surveyed on 10 September 2014, in a Habitat Protection (Blue) Zone, where line fishing is permitted.

Coral cover

Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
The in situ benthic transects recorded 33% live coral cover against a 47% algal fraction at a survey depth of 6.5 m.
Transect mean 31 ± 3.2% SE (n = 5 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is the expedition's station value (the headline weights each depth equally; one depth had a single transect).

Stressors

Regional context, not an observation here: surveyed about eighteen months before the 2016 mass bleaching, an event that severely bleached hundreds of reefs on the northern Great Barrier Reef (Hughes et al. 2017); 5-year mean annual maximum thermal stress at the Northern GBR virtual station is 7.8 degree heating weeks.

Comparisons with other data

No other surveys have been conducted at this site to date. Within 5 km, three XL Catlin Seaview Survey stations recorded 7.3–24% hard coral cover between 2012 and 2017; the nearest, XL Catlin Seaview Survey at transect 12027, 1.65 km away, read 7.3–24% between 2012 and 2017.

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 2.0%, plating Acropora 16%, massive corals 4.4% of colonizable substrate, 42 images, 2024-11-16, 1.70 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. 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, 3 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 9 surveys between 2012 and 2017. Of the 2 stations surveyed in more than one year, 2 declined by more than 7 points between their first and latest surveys. Two stations share the longest span (2012–2017); one, transect 12027 (XL Catlin Seaview Survey, 1.65 km away), went from 24% in 2012 to 7.3% in 2017. The most recent nearby survey is from 2017, so these values predate recent heat stress. This site's own estimate (33%) sits 8 points above the range of these surveys up to 2 km away (7.3–24%); the methods differ, so the comparison is context, not a like-for-like test.

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 12027	2012–2017	7.3–24% (4 surveys)	1.65 km	doi:10.14264/uql.2019.930
XL Catlin Seaview Survey	transect 12007	2012	18%	2.22 km	doi:10.14264/uql.2019.930
XL Catlin Seaview Survey	transect 12026	2012–2017	7.3–19% (4 surveys)	3.60 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.