N. GBR - Pink (AUPE124)

Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation — Global Reef Expedition

Part of the regional summaries: Australia (GBR) - Far North: Pink stations (Preservation Zone reefs) and Australia (GBR)

Country

Australia

Survey date(s)

2014-09-25

Coordinates

-11.5590, 143.7189

Coral cover

37%

Benthic transects+photo-quadrats

Observations

not yet tagged for this site

Heat stress

Today’s heat load

25.2°C 0.0°C-weeks

3 Oct 2026 · No heat stress

5-year thermal stress load

5-year mean max. degree heating weeks (DHW)

11.1°C-weeksⁱ

2021–2025

NOAA Coral Reef Watch — Far 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 info

Far Northern GBR (NOAA CRW virtual station)

Survey depth (expedition team)

6.1 m

Living Oceans Foundation (LOF) benthic survey depth; no dive by Anderson at this station

Sea surface temp. (satellite)

25.2°C

satellite sea surface temperature (SST) on the survey date (NOAA Coral Reef Watch, Far 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

One independent survey station 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, Pearson and Siddons Reefs, northern Great Barrier Reef (Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation; opens in a new window)

Site description

Setting

Global Reef Expedition station AUPE124 on Pearson Reef, far northern Great Barrier Reef (-11.5590, 143.7189), surveyed on 25 September 2014.

Coral cover

Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
The in situ benthic transects recorded 37% live coral cover against a 44% algal fraction at a survey depth of 6.1 m.
Transect mean 37 ± 3.5% SE (n = 9 transects; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); the headline above is the expedition's station value.

Stressors

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.

Comparisons with other data

No other surveys have been conducted at this site to date. Within 5 km, one independent station, AIMS manta tow at PEARSON REEF, 0.88 km away, read 10–32% between 1995 and 2023.

Independent surveys nearby

Within 5 km, 1 independent survey station recorded hard coral cover in 9 surveys between 1995 and 2023. The one station surveyed in more than one year declined by 5.8 points between its first and latest surveys. The longest record, PEARSON REEF (AIMS manta tow, 0.88 km away), went from 26% in 1995 to 20% in 2023. Since 2021, station-year means average 24% (range 19–32%; n = 3 station-years from 3 surveys). This site's own estimate (37%) sits 5 points above the recent range (19–32%); 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), 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
Agency	Site / location	Date	Hard coral cover (%)	Distance	Link
AIMS manta tow	PEARSON REEF	1995–2023	10–32% (9 surveys)	0.88 km	doi:10.25845/5c09b0abf315a

Data & links

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.