N. GBR - Green (AUEY163)

Setting

This last dive of the day near Hilder Reef and Eyrie was a shallow, murky affair, visibility down to 2-3 m and a maximum site depth of only 8.5 m, and the photographs reflect it: every frame is shot close, with no wide view of the reef available.

General benthic features

The algae-covered substrate shows up clearly in one frame, where a cat shark lies tucked under a ledge whose whole underside is furred with gray-brown algal turf (e.g., Image 3).

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The corals photographed are the ones Anderson listed as providing what structure there was: a massive Galaxea-type colony, rust-orange and packed with tubular corallites, carrying a few bare scars, and two purple-tipped Acropora colonies growing on knobby Porites and rubble in green, particle-heavy water (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 4).

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Massive Porites, Lobophyllia, Galaxea, and scattered faviids filled out the rest, and recruit numbers stayed decent even where adult cover was thin.

Coral cover

• Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
• Live coral cover measured 26% at this point, within a site where all eight transects stayed low, generally under 5%, dominated by fleshy macroalgae and algae-covered rubble rather than living coral.
• Transect mean 26 ± 7.6% SE (n = 4 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is the expedition's station value.

Fish and other fauna

A gray reef shark joined the cat shark as the dive's highlight, and nothing here pointed to bleaching, disease, or crown-of-thorns starfish.

Comparisons with other data

No other surveys have been conducted at this site to date. Within 5 km, one independent station, AIMS manta tow at EYRIE REEF, 3.72 km away, read 5.5–30% between 1995 and 2021.