Australian Institute of Marine Science
Coral Reef Diagnostics

N. GBR - Pink (AUCT51)

Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation — Global Reef Expedition
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Part of the regional summaries: Australia (GBR) - Far North: Pink stations (Preservation Zone reefs) and Australia (GBR)

05
Coral Health Index: TBD
Photo: Anderson Mayfield/Coral Reef Diagnostics
Country
Australia
Survey date(s)
2014-09-11
Coordinates
-14.5281, 145.5691
Coral cover
14%
Benthic transects+photo-quadrats
Observations
None noted in the photographs reviewed.
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)
Photographs
51
32 shown on this page
Site summary

A bommie-studded sand apron on Carter Reef, where the 15 m transect at the base of the wall held dense plating Leptoseris, stacked into towers a meter or more high. At 20 m the reef breaks into a sand apron where bommies covered only about a quarter of a 50 m line, though recruitment was strong and no bleaching, disease, or crown-of-thorns were reported. Surveyed on the Living Oceans Foundation's Global Reef Expedition.

Max. depth dived
23.4 m
dive-log maximum
Sea surface temp. (satellite)
24.8°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
Bottom time
61 min
in at 11:13

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

Four 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, Yonge, Hicks, and Carter Reefs, northern Great Barrier Reef (Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation; opens in a new window)

24 of the 32 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.

710172227303132

Photo credit & attribution

Site description

Setting

Carter Reef falls within a Preservation (Pink) Zone, with entry restricted and no take permitted.

General benthic features

Anderson's second Carter Reef dive, on 11 September 2014, found the reef structured as a bommie-studded sand apron, with the main bommie, where the other divers surveyed, cresting to just 1-1.5 m below the surface and carrying at least 50% cover of dense acroporids, pocilloporids, and encrusting poritids, though soft coral cover was notably high there too. The photographs are strongest on the plating Leptoseris: on the 15 m transect at the base of the wall Anderson logged a high density of these colonies, and several frames show plating colonies of that kind: tier upon tier of overlapping olive and tan plates with cream growing margins, stacked into towers a meter or more high, one crowned by a pale fleshy colony and both hung about with fusiliers and chromis (e.g., Image 1, Image 2); more tiers of tan plates appear in Image 9, Image 26, Image 28.

1Image 12Image 29Image 926Image 2628Image 28

Another frame is a single massive dome, its fine corallites ruled out in even rows, rising from pink coralline rock (e.g., Image 3); a similar dome fills Image 6, and a large meandroid brain-type colony fills Image 25.

3Image 36Image 625Image 25

Many of the wide frames explain the low number: broad expanses of coralline-crusted pavement studded with small mounding and digitate colonies rather than continuous cover (e.g., Image 4, Image 5, Image 8, Image 13, Image 18, Image 19, Image 21, Image 29, Image 33), though recruitment was high on his 10.5 m transect.

4Image 45Image 58Image 813Image 1318Image 1819Image 1921Image 2129Image 2933Image 33

The rest of the 33-frame gallery holds close views of mixed colonies, including bright pink branching colonies (e.g., Image 14, Image 16, Image 24), a bommie top crowded with yellow soft corals and small colonies (e.g., Image 23), a giant clam (e.g., Image 15, Image 20), and an orange tubular sponge (e.g., Image 11).

14Image 1416Image 1624Image 2423Image 2315Image 1520Image 2011Image 11

Coral cover

Stressors

No bleaching, disease, or crown-of-thorns activity was reported.

Comparisons with other data

No other surveys have been conducted at this site to date. Within 5 km, five independent stations (AIMS LTMP, AIMS manta tow, and XL Catlin Seaview Survey) recorded 3.9–73% hard coral cover between 1993 and 2023; the nearest, AIMS LTMP at CARTER REEF site 1, 1.47 km away, read 7.5–73% between 1993 and 2022.

CV model comparison

The LOF Global Reef Expedition in-water transect is THE coral-cover value for this site.
More infoThe photo row below is a methods comparison only: it is never averaged with the transect and never used as the headline. It compares site means only: the photos come from the same survey dive as the transect but not from the same points.
MethodHard-coral cover (%)Photos (n) ± SE
Transect (published)14.0
CoralSCOP edited26.0n = 20 · SE 1.9
Claude (edited photos)18.9n = 20 · SE 3.3

The two computer-vision methods differ by 7.1 pp (19–26%) and read 4.9–12.0 pp above the in-water transect (14%); the headline is the in-water transect because a diver transect is independent of the photographs.

Independent surveys nearby

Data availability near this site
Agency / programYear(s)Stations / distanceLink
AIMS LTMP1993–20223 stations, 1.47–2.07 kmRecords ↓
AIMS manta tow1993–20231 station, 2.88 kmRecords ↓
XL Catlin Seaview Survey2012–20171 station, 2.34 kmRecords ↓
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%20%40%60%80%199320082023AIMS LTMP 1993: 7.5%AIMS LTMP 1993: 14%AIMS LTMP 1993: 17%AIMS LTMP 1994: 20%AIMS LTMP 1994: 23%AIMS LTMP 1994: 26%AIMS LTMP 1995: 31%AIMS LTMP 1995: 33%AIMS LTMP 1995: 34%AIMS LTMP 1997: 45%AIMS LTMP 1997: 55%AIMS LTMP 1997: 57%AIMS LTMP 1998: 58%AIMS LTMP 1998: 64%AIMS LTMP 1998: 73%AIMS LTMP 1999: 56%AIMS LTMP 1999: 65%AIMS LTMP 1999: 65%AIMS LTMP 2000: 58%AIMS LTMP 2000: 62%AIMS LTMP 2000: 62%AIMS LTMP 2001: 55%AIMS LTMP 2001: 58%AIMS LTMP 2001: 61%AIMS LTMP 2002: 51%AIMS LTMP 2002: 58%AIMS LTMP 2002: 59%AIMS LTMP 2003: 55%AIMS LTMP 2003: 56%AIMS LTMP 2003: 61%AIMS LTMP 2004: 32%AIMS LTMP 2004: 42%AIMS LTMP 2004: 43%AIMS LTMP 2006: 27%AIMS LTMP 2006: 30%AIMS LTMP 2006: 34%AIMS LTMP 2008: 34%AIMS LTMP 2008: 34%AIMS LTMP 2008: 40%AIMS LTMP 2010: 40%AIMS LTMP 2010: 42%AIMS LTMP 2010: 45%AIMS LTMP 2012: 24%AIMS LTMP 2012: 32%AIMS LTMP 2012: 34%AIMS LTMP 2014: 22%AIMS LTMP 2014: 27%AIMS LTMP 2014: 28%AIMS LTMP 2016: 7.7%AIMS LTMP 2016: 8.8%AIMS LTMP 2016: 9.0%AIMS LTMP 2018: 11%AIMS LTMP 2018: 12%AIMS LTMP 2018: 13%AIMS LTMP 2020: 20%AIMS LTMP 2020: 22%AIMS LTMP 2020: 24%AIMS LTMP 2021: 27%AIMS LTMP 2021: 29%AIMS LTMP 2021: 30%AIMS LTMP 2022: 28%AIMS LTMP 2022: 34%AIMS LTMP 2022: 36%AIMS manta tow 1993: 16%AIMS manta tow 1995: 18%AIMS manta tow 1996: 17%AIMS manta tow 1998: 18%AIMS manta tow 1999: 30%AIMS manta tow 2000: 30%AIMS manta tow 2001: 31%AIMS manta tow 2002: 35%AIMS manta tow 2003: 33%AIMS manta tow 2004: 21%AIMS manta tow 2005: 29%AIMS manta tow 2006: 14%AIMS manta tow 2007: 14%AIMS manta tow 2008: 14%AIMS manta tow 2009: 15%AIMS manta tow 2011: 21%AIMS manta tow 2013: 13%AIMS manta tow 2015: 9.7%AIMS manta tow 2017: 3.9%AIMS manta tow 2019: 6.7%AIMS manta tow 2021: 18%AIMS manta tow 2022: 29%AIMS manta tow 2023: 33%XL Catlin Seaview Survey 2012: 19%XL Catlin Seaview Survey 2014: 15%XL Catlin Seaview Survey 2016: 13%XL Catlin Seaview Survey 2017: 17%LOF Global Reef Expedition 2014: 14%Year-averaged across all programs: illustrative only; the programs differ in stations and method, so no trend is claimed (31 years)
AIMS LTMP AIMS manta tow XL Catlin Seaview Survey LOF Global Reef ExpeditionYear-average (illustrative only, programs differ)

Within 5 km, 5 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 93 surveys between 1993 and 2023. Of the 5 stations surveyed in more than one year, 4 were scored by divers or by people annotating photographs: 4 increased (by 10.8–26.0 points) between their 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, CARTER REEF (AIMS manta tow, 2.88 km away), went from 16% in 1993 to 33% in 2023. Since 2021, station-year means average 29% (range 18–36%; n = 9 station-years from 9 surveys). This site's own estimate (14%) sits 15 points below the recent range up to 2 km away (29–36%); 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; AIMS LTMP uses fixed photo-transects; 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
AgencySite / locationDateHard coral cover (%)DistanceLink
AIMS LTMPCARTER REEF site 11993–20227.5–73% (range of yearly means; 22 surveys)1.47 kmdoi:10.25845/5c09bc4ff315c
AIMS LTMPCARTER REEF site 21993–20228.8–65% (range of yearly means; 22 surveys)1.72 kmdoi:10.25845/5c09bc4ff315c
AIMS LTMPCARTER REEF site 31993–20227.7–59% (range of yearly means; 22 surveys)2.07 kmdoi:10.25845/5c09bc4ff315c
AIMS manta towCARTER REEF1993–20233.9–35% (23 surveys)2.88 kmdoi:10.25845/5c09b0abf315a
XL Catlin Seaview Surveytransect 120252012–201713–19% (4 surveys)2.34 kmdoi:10.14264/uql.2019.930

Data & links

All images from Coral Reef Diagnostics. 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.