Part of the regional summaries: Australia (GBR) - Far North: Green stations (no-take reefs) and Australia (GBR)
More info
Northern GBR (NOAA CRW virtual station)One independent survey station shown with the program’s logo — click one to see how far it is from this site.
🗺 Detailed map of the Global Reef Expedition dive sites, Lark, Williamson, and unnamed reef 15-043, northern Great Barrier Reef (Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation; opens in a new window)
Site description
Setting
This site is in a Marine National Park (Green) Zone — no-take, though entry for diving is allowed. The expedition's own site table classifies AULK29 as a sheltered mid shelf reef on an intermediate aspect.
General benthic features
The bright spot was a single large Diploastrea colony hosting the reef's best coral diversity, and several fungid corals that appeared to have outlasted an earlier crown-of-thorns outbreak. Alongside the hard coral already reported for this site, the same transects recorded 1.2% crustose coralline algae, 43% turf, 4.7% macroalgae, and 1.2% cyanobacteria. Non-living substrate came to 3.8% dead coral, 44% rubble, and 2.0% sand. These figures come from the expedition's own 933-site benthic master and are survey results, not photographic estimates.
Coral cover
- Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
- Coral cover at this survey point, 16%, reflects that patchwork of dead framework and scattered survivors.
- Transect mean 15 ± 4.5% SE (n = 4 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is the expedition's station value (the headline weights each depth equally; two depths had a single transect).
Stressors
Staghorn Acropora once framed much of the reef, but 90% or more of it had already died by the time of the survey, leaving sponges, tunicates, and turf algae to colonize the skeleton. Only two COTS turned up on this particular dive — not enough, in Anderson's reading, to explain the extensive standing die-off.
Fish and other fauna
Paired fish transects recorded about 36 fish species per transect and about 20 kg per 100 m2 of biomass.
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 SWINGER REEF, 3.77 km away, read 11–39% between 1995 and 2023.
Dive record
After a long search for a survey spot, Anderson's team settled on this Lark Reef site on 7 September 2014 — a scatter of coral patches beside one or two sizeable bommies, worked entirely in the shallow 8-10 m range.
Independent surveys nearby
LOF Within 5 km, 1 independent survey station recorded hard coral cover in 10 surveys between 1995 and 2023. The one station surveyed in more than one year increased by 18.9 points between its first and latest surveys. The longest record, SWINGER REEF (AIMS manta tow, 3.77 km away), went from 20% in 1995 to 39% in 2023. Since 2021, station-year means average 33% (range 26–39%; n = 2 station-years from 2 surveys). This site's own estimate (16%) 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.
| Agency | Site / location | Date | Hard coral cover (%) | Distance | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AIMS manta tow | SWINGER REEF | 1995–2023 | 11–39% (10 surveys) | 3.77 km | doi:10.25845/5c09b0abf315a |
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.