N. GBR - Pink (AUMM87)

Setting

Milman Reef's second dive trades the continuous reef sheet of the first stop for a scattered field of coral bommies and patch reefs rising 1-2 m out of the sand, explored in murky water with a light current. The site sits within a strict no-take Preservation Zone. The expedition's own site table classifies AUMM87 as an inner open lagoon reef; Anderson's own dive sheet records it as a leeward midshelf reef.

General benthic features

The real highlight sits at 5-7 m, where Porites rus, Turbinaria plates, P. cylindrica, plating acroporids, and fire coral crowd together at nearly 100% cover in places — genuinely spectacular reef structure. A wide frame shows a bommie in that field, carrying an arborescent branching colony, a large dark rounded colony, meandroid brain colonies, lobed massive colonies, and a small orange plate (e.g., Image 2); others show bommies and patch reefs rising from sand (e.g., Image 10, Image 21) and the transect tape run across a patch-reef-and-sand bottom (e.g., Image 33, Image 37).

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Most of the set is the survey itself: downward photo-quadrats through a black PVC frame strung with a chain (e.g., Image 3, Image 4, Image 5, Image 7, Image 8, Image 9, Image 13, Image 14, Image 15, Image 22, Image 25, Image 28, Image 29, Image 31, Image 32, Image 34, Image 36, Image 39, Image 41, Image 42, Image 45, Image 46, Image 47, Image 50, Image 51, Image 52, Image 53, Image 57), landing on bare sand and silt (e.g., Image 14, Image 22, Image 29, Image 36, Image 41, Image 46), on rubble and crusted pavement, and on living massive and encrusting colonies (e.g., Image 31, Image 39, Image 57).

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Between the quadrats, the wide and mid-range frames show fields of pale, cabbage-like whorled plates (e.g., Image 17, Image 20, Image 30, Image 54), a large yellow-green convoluted foliose colony well over a meter across (e.g., Image 24), a ruffled foliose mound (e.g., Image 16), meandroid plating colonies beside soft corals (e.g., Image 11, Image 27), and discrete branching bushes on sand (e.g., Image 35, Image 56); a measuring tape is laid against a brown branching colony in Image 59.

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Alongside the hard coral already reported for this site, the same transects recorded 1.7% turf and 0.3% macroalgae. Non-living substrate came to 7.0% rubble and 13% 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)
• Deeper transects at 8-10 m were quieter (Anderson's by-eye estimates of 10-30%; the point counts returned 46%), built from a mix of Lobophyllia, Galaxea, massive Porites, Acropora, and soft corals.
• Transect mean 46 ± 11% SE (n = 3 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is the expedition's station value.

Stressors

Anderson's notes for this dive do not mention coral bleaching or disease and list no crown-of-thorns starfish, but one frame from the start of the dive shows a crown-of-thorns starfish on open sand beside a pale soft coral (e.g., Image 43).

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Fish and other fauna

Fish life stood out as unusually healthy and abundant here, with a nurse shark and a stingray among the notable sightings. Two frames look under a ledge whose roof is hung with blue-purple and red encrusting growths, with a shark resting on the sand beneath it, consistent with the nurse shark in his notes (e.g., Image 1, Image 12); Image 18 shows the same ledge.

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Paired fish transects recorded about 29 fish species per transect and about 19 kg per 100 m2 of biomass.

Comparisons with other data

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