N. GBR - Pink (AUMM89)

Setting

Milman Reef's third dive happened in murky water, barely a meter of visibility, thick with suspended sediment, and all three photographs here were shot at arm's length.

General benthic features

One frame shows a fine-branched thicket, pale and dusted gray, growing across a Galaxea-type colony whose tubular corallites are still visible beneath it (e.g., Image 3).

3

Big fleshy-polyped corals rule this reef: sprawling Goniopora and Alveopora, and a giant Euphyllia glabrescens head (the largest he had seen, in Anderson's notes), with Porites cylindrica, Leptoseris, Galaxea, Echinopora, Diploastrea, and Pavona in the shallower band. Corals barely persisted past 13-14 m in the silt.

Coral cover

• Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
• Point-count cover at this survey point read 51%; Anderson's own transects at 9.5-11.5 m ran 20-35% by eye.
• Transect mean 51 ± 11% SE (n = 3 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is the expedition's station value.

Stressors

Another frame is the clearest statement of the problem: a mat of branching coral framework caked in gray silt, some branches bare, chalk-white, and free of silt, one rust-red colony still hanging on among them (e.g., Image 1).

1

The third is a crown-of-thorns starfish at close range, its long maroon spines fanned over open sand (e.g., Image 2); a single COTS was logged here; his notes say only that some corals had been smothered in the extreme sediment load and do not link the starfish to the coral loss.

2

Comparisons with other data

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