N. GBR - Pink (AUR612)

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)

2014-09-04

Coordinates

-15.2840, 145.7600

Coral cover

41%

Benthic transects+photo-quadrats

Observations

not yet tagged for this site

Heat stress

Today’s heat load

24.8°C 0.0°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 info

Northern GBR (NOAA CRW virtual station)

Survey depth (expedition team)

7.9 m

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

Sea surface temp. (satellite)

24.7°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

Two 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, Ribbon Reefs, northern Great Barrier Reef (Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation; opens in a new window)

Site description

Setting

Global Reef Expedition station AUR612 on Ribbon Reef 6, northern Great Barrier Reef (-15.2840, 145.7600), surveyed on 4 September 2014. The site lies in a Preservation (Pink) Zone, closed to all entry without a permit.

Coral cover

Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
The in situ benthic transects recorded 41% live coral cover against a 30% algal fraction at a survey depth of 7.9 m.

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 Northern GBR virtual station is 7.8 degree heating weeks.

Comparisons with other data

No other surveys have been conducted at this site to date. Within 5 km, two AIMS manta tow stations recorded 11–36% hard coral cover between 1994 and 2021; the nearest, AIMS manta tow at RIBBON NO 6 REEF, 1.08 km away, read 11–35% between 1994 and 2017.

Independent surveys nearby

Within 5 km, 2 independent survey stations recorded hard coral cover in 14 surveys between 1994 and 2021. Of the 2 stations surveyed in more than one year, 1 declined (by 23.8 points) and 1 increased (by 9.1 points) between their first and latest surveys. The longest record, 15034S (AIMS manta tow, 3.70 km away), went from 26% in 1996 to 35% in 2021. One survey since 2021 recorded 35%. This site's own estimate (41%) sits 7 points above the range of these surveys up to 2 km away (11–35%); 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	RIBBON NO 6 REEF	1994–2017	11–35% (6 surveys)	1.08 km	doi:10.25845/5c09b0abf315a
AIMS manta tow	15034S	1996–2021	14–36% (8 surveys)	3.70 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.