N. GBR - Green (AUSD133)

Setting

Global Reef Expedition station AUSD133 on Siddons Reef, far northern Great Barrier Reef (-11.5159, 143.6478), surveyed on 26 September 2014 on that day's third dive, in a Marine National Park (Green) Zone.

General benthic features

The notes describe a gentle slope from 10 to 15 m through extensive staghorn and elkhorn thickets, colonies over 10 m long and up to 1.5 m tall, with the densest patches estimated by eye at 70-90% where bottlebrush Acropora formed dense stands, one sheltering a lionfish.

Coral cover

• Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
• The in situ benthic transects recorded 47% live coral cover against a 34% algal fraction on a dive to 15.1 m; that transect value is the authoritative cover figure for this site, and no photographs exist for the site.
• Transect mean 48 ± 12% SE (n = 8 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is the expedition's station value (the headline weights each depth equally).

Stressors

Here Seriatopora hystrix was recorded as surprisingly healthy and common. 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 Far Northern GBR virtual station is 11.1 degree heating weeks.

Fish and other fauna

Six to seven gray reef sharks were logged.

Comparisons with other data

No prior survey data from this site. If you would like to share yours, please email us.