N. GBR - Blue (AUR516)

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)

2014-09-05

Coordinates

-15.3304, 145.7788

Coral cover

25%

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)

6.9 m

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

Sea surface temp. (satellite)

24.7°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.

Two 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

Global Reef Expedition station AUR516 on Ribbon Reef 5, northern Great Barrier Reef (-15.3304, 145.7788), surveyed on 5 September 2014. The expedition surveyed Ribbon Reef 5 as one of its Blue (Habitat Protection Zone, open to line fishing) reefs; on the GBRMPA zoning map the recorded position itself falls in the adjoining Buffer Zone, where trolling for pelagic fish is the only fishing permitted, about 190 m outside the Habitat Protection Zone boundary.

Coral cover

Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
The in situ benthic transects recorded 25% live coral cover against a 48% algal fraction at a survey depth of 6.9 m.
That transect value is the authoritative cover figure for this site, and no photographs exist for the site.
Transect mean 25 ± 1.6% SE (n = 7 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is the expedition's station value.

Stressors

Regional context only: 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 independent stations (AIMS manta tow and XL Catlin Seaview Survey) recorded 8.0–36% hard coral cover between 1996 and 2021; the nearest, XL Catlin Seaview Survey at transect 12038, 1.42 km away, read 8.0–27% between 2012 and 2017.

Independent surveys nearby

Data availability near this site
Agency / program	Year(s)	Stations / distance	Link
AIMS manta tow	1996–2021	2 stations, 2.00–3.10 km	Records ↓
XL Catlin Seaview Survey	2012–2017	1 station, 1.42 km	Records ↓

Within 5 km, 3 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 13 surveys between 1996 and 2021. Of the 2 stations surveyed in more than one year, 1 was scored by divers or by people annotating photographs: increased by 9.1 points between its first and latest surveys. The other 1 was scored by automated image analysis: changed by 7 points or less, inside the 7-point method-noise floor (inconclusive). The longest record, 15034S (AIMS manta tow, 2.00 km away), went from 26% in 1996 to 35% in 2021. One survey since 2021 recorded 35%. This site's own estimate (25%) sits 10 points below the recent value up to 2 km away (35%); the methods differ, so the comparison is context, not a like-for-like test.

Collected by other programs using different methods (AIMS manta tow is a towed visual estimate in categorical bins; 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
AIMS manta tow	15034S	1996–2021	14–36% (8 surveys)	2.00 km	doi:10.25845/5c09b0abf315a
AIMS manta tow	15037S	2009	26%	3.10 km	doi:10.25845/5c09b0abf315a
XL Catlin Seaview Survey	transect 12038	2012–2017	8.0–27% (4 surveys)	1.42 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.