Australian Institute of Marine Science
Coral Reef Diagnostics

N. GBR - Green (AUEY164)

Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation — Global Reef Expedition
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Part of the regional summaries: Australia (GBR) - Far North: Green stations (no-take reefs) and Australia (GBR)

05
Coral Health Index: TBD
Country
Australia
Survey date(s)
2014-10-01
Coordinates
-14.6852, 145.3821
Coral cover
33%
Benthic transects+photo-quadrats
Observations
not yet tagged for this site
Heat stress
Today’s heat load
24.8°C0.0°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 infoNorthern GBR (NOAA CRW virtual station)
Survey depth (expedition team)
6.3 m
Living Oceans Foundation (LOF) benthic survey depth; no dive by Anderson at this station
Sea surface temp. (satellite)
25.3°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

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

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

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

Site description

Setting

Global Reef Expedition station AUEY164, northern Great Barrier Reef (-14.6852, 145.3821), surveyed on 1 October 2014.

Coral cover

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, one independent station, AIMS manta tow at EYRIE REEF, 3.58 km away, read 5.5–30% between 1995 and 2021.

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 2.1%, plating Acropora 7.2%, massive corals 8.8% of colonizable substrate, 20 images, 2022-10-28, 1.76 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. Sites with fewer than 40 images have fewer images than the 40–80 the method needs to estimate site-level values to within 5 percentage points. 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

Hard coral cover over time — this site and every independent station within 5 km. Programs are shown separately because they use different methods at different stations; the lines are not one comparable series.
0%10%20%30%40%199520082021AIMS manta tow 1995: 16%AIMS manta tow 1998: 15%AIMS manta tow 2001: 20%AIMS manta tow 2004: 14%AIMS manta tow 2007: 23%AIMS manta tow 2013: 27%AIMS manta tow 2015: 5.5%AIMS manta tow 2021: 30%LOF Global Reef Expedition 2014: 33%Year-averaged across all programs: illustrative only; the programs differ in stations and method, so no trend is claimed (9 years)
AIMS manta tow LOF Global Reef ExpeditionYear-average (illustrative only, programs differ)

Within 5 km, 1 independent survey station recorded hard coral cover in 8 surveys between 1995 and 2021. The one station surveyed in more than one year increased by 13.4 points between its first and latest surveys. The longest record, EYRIE REEF (AIMS manta tow, 3.58 km away), went from 16% in 1995 to 30% in 2021. One survey since 2021 recorded 30%. This site's own estimate (33%) is not compared with these surveys: none lies within 2 km.

Collected by other programs using different methods (AIMS manta tow is a towed visual estimate in categorical bins), 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
AgencySite / locationDateHard coral cover (%)DistanceLink
AIMS manta towEYRIE REEF1995–20215.5–30% (8 surveys)3.58 kmdoi:10.25845/5c09b0abf315a

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.

© Coral Reef Diagnostics.