Part of the regional summaries: Australia (GBR) - Far North: Blue stations (Habitat Protection Zone reefs) and Australia (GBR)
More info
Northern GBR (NOAA CRW virtual station)Seven independent survey stations shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
Four 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, Ribbon Reefs, northern Great Barrier Reef (Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation; opens in a new window)
Site description
Setting
This windward stretch of Ribbon Reef 5 drops away as an almost sheer wall — close to 90 degrees — where Anderson judged that the coral likely stops around 30 m, with only rubble and sand at 40-50 m; the survey transects recorded 50% coral cover. The site sits 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)
- Coral cover: 50%.
- Live hard coral measured on in situ benthic transects during the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation Global Reef Expedition, against total algal cover (all algal groups) of 31% of the benthos.
- Transect data are this site's authoritative cover value; no computer vision or image-derived product overrides it.
- Transect mean 46 ± 8.6% SE (n = 3 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
Anderson's notes for this dive do not mention bleaching, disease, or crown-of-thorns starfish, and its photographs were lost.
Fish and other fauna
A small Napoleon wrasse cruised the wall and a huge school of 70 to 80 parrotfish swept past during the dive, though the site's photos were unfortunately lost to a software glitch back on the boat.
Comparisons with other data
No other surveys have been conducted at this site to date. Within 5 km, seven independent stations (Reef Check and XL Catlin Seaview Survey) recorded 7.0–53% hard coral cover between 1999 and 2017; the nearest, XL Catlin Seaview Survey at transect 12036, 1.15 km away, read 11–17% 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 15%, plating Acropora 1.8%, massive corals 2.9% of colonizable substrate, 105 images, 2023-10-18, 1.99 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).
Other notes
Structural complexity readings here need to be read with some caution, since the near-vertical wall made standard measurements tricky.
Independent surveys nearby
| Agency / program | Year(s) | Stations / distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reef Check | 1999–2008 | 3 stations, 1.69–1.87 km | Records ↓ |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | 2012–2017 | 4 stations, 1.15–4.74 km | Records ↓ |
LOF Global Reef ExpeditionYear-average (illustrative only, programs differ)Within 5 km, 7 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 17 surveys between 1999 and 2017. Of the 4 stations surveyed in more than one year, 1 was scored by divers or by people annotating photographs: increased by 1.9 points between its first and latest surveys. The other 3 were scored by automated image analysis: 2 declined by more than 7 points; 1 changed by 7 points or less, inside the 7-point method-noise floor (inconclusive). Two stations share the longest span (2012–2017); one, transect 12036 (XL Catlin Seaview Survey, 1.15 km away), went from 15% in 2012 to 11% in 2017. The most recent nearby survey is from 2017, so these values predate recent heat stress. This site's own estimate (50%) sits within the range of these surveys up to 2 km away (7.0–53%); the methods differ, so the comparison is context, not a like-for-like test.
Collected by other programs using different methods (Reef Check uses point-intercept transects; 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.
| Agency | Site / location | Date | Hard coral cover (%) | Distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reef Check | Ribbon Reef #5 southern patch | 1999 | 53% | 1.69 km | — |
| Reef Check | Ribbon Reef 3 - Clam Beds (Back reef slope) Site 1 | 2004 | 43% | 1.87 km | — |
| Reef Check | Ribbon Reef 3 - Clam Beds (Back reef slope) Site 1 | 2005–2008 | 41–49% (4 surveys) | 1.70 km | — |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | transect 12036 | 2012–2017 | 11–17% (4 surveys) | 1.15 km | doi:10.14264/uql.2019.930 |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | transect 12037 | 2012–2017 | 7.0–18% (3 surveys) | 1.62 km | doi:10.14264/uql.2019.930 |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | transect 12003 | 2012 | 38% | 1.72 km | doi:10.14264/uql.2019.930 |
| XL Catlin Seaview Survey | transect 12038 | 2014–2017 | 8.0–27% (3 surveys) | 4.74 km | doi:10.14264/uql.2019.930 |
Data & links
- Download benthic survey data (CSV) ↗
- Download all LOF-GRE data (933 sites) ↗
- Photo portfolio ↗
- Coral Reef Diagnostics country page ↗
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.
© Coral Reef Diagnostics.