Australian Institute of Marine Science
Coral Reef Diagnostics

N. GBR - Pink (AUCT53)

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
-14.5300, 145.5870
Approximate position.
Coral cover
31%
Benthic transects+photo-quadrats
Observations
bleaching
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
67
23 shown on this page
Site summary

A multi-tiered channel wall on Carter Reef dropping past 20 m and on to 40 m or more, with huge Diploastrea colonies, a best transect of 30-40% live cover near a bommie, and two large cuttlefish. Visibility was murky; his notes record sickly-looking needle corals, and two frames show stark-white, bleached branching colonies. Surveyed on the Living Oceans Foundation's Global Reef Expedition.

Max. depth dived
21 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
58 min
in at 15:25

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

Five 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)

6 of the 23 photographs on this page are shown beside the text that discusses them under "Site description" below.

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Photo credit & attribution

Site description

Setting

Carter Reef's third dive on 11 September 2014 dropped Anderson onto a multi-tiered channel wall, descending from 15 m past a dramatic drop-off to 20-23 m (with the wall itself continuing to 40 m or more) — his notes call the cover at 20 m "notably high ... (rare for this trip)," though 5-7 m visibility kept the view murky. This site lies in a Preservation (Pink) Zone, the Marine Park's strictest protection tier, where entry is restricted.

General benthic features

Huge Diploastrea colonies were a common sight, and the best transect, near a bommie at 10.5 m, ran 30-40% live cover with a mix of Porites, Pocillopora, Stylophora, and encrusting corals plus plenty of crustose coralline algae (e.g., Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, Image 5).

1Image 12Image 23Image 35Image 5

Coral cover

Stressors

One note of concern: his notes record "Sickly looking S. hystrix" (needle coral). Two frames show fine-branching colonies of that kind that are stark white from base to tip, with crisp corallites, a faint lilac sheen at the tips, and no algal film, among pigmented neighbors: fully bleached living colonies (e.g., Image 10, Image 21).

10Image 1021Image 21

Fish and other fauna

This 31%-cover survey point also turned up two large cuttlefish along the wall.

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 3, 0.17 km away, read 7.7–59% between 1993 and 2022.

Other notes

Position approximate: expedition-estimated (three decimals in the 933-site table); Anderson's sheet and the expedition's planning table carry another day's coordinates for this station.

Independent surveys nearby

Data availability near this site
Agency / programYear(s)Stations / distanceLink
AIMS LTMP1993–20223 stations, 0.17–0.90 kmRecords ↓
AIMS manta tow1993–20231 station, 2.26 kmRecords ↓
XL Catlin Seaview Survey2012–20171 station, 3.62 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: 31%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, 2.26 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 (31%) sits within the recent range up to 2 km away (27–36%); 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 31993–20227.7–59% (range of yearly means; 22 surveys)0.17 kmdoi:10.25845/5c09bc4ff315c
AIMS LTMPCARTER REEF site 21993–20228.8–65% (range of yearly means; 22 surveys)0.45 kmdoi:10.25845/5c09bc4ff315c
AIMS LTMPCARTER REEF site 11993–20227.5–73% (range of yearly means; 22 surveys)0.90 kmdoi:10.25845/5c09bc4ff315c
AIMS manta towCARTER REEF1993–20233.9–35% (23 surveys)2.26 kmdoi:10.25845/5c09b0abf315a
XL Catlin Seaview Surveytransect 120252012–201713–19% (4 surveys)3.62 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.