N. GBR - Pink (AUYD107)

Setting

Yule Detached Reef starts with a swim: the team was dropped into 50-60 m of open blue and had to make its own way to the reef, joined en route by half a dozen gray reef sharks, a whitetip, and two large silvertips (his first of the trip). Visibility ran 30-40 m and live coral appeared to reach 40 m down.

General benthic features

The photographs show wide, dim views of a slope carrying many small colonies but little continuous cover, tabulate Acropora plates spaced out along a face with pale yellow-green foliose colonies below and a bare sand chute cutting through (e.g., Image 2, Image 4, Image 5).

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Cover was higher on the 10.5 m transect, with big Montipora plates, fire coral, and massive Porites. His four transects counted 33 coral recruits (8.3 ± 4.5 SD per transect).

Coral cover

• Reference: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, Global Reef Expedition (in situ transect)
• The LOF point-count transect at this station recorded 19% live coral cover.
• Anderson's notes say that at 5-6 m, where the "usual suspects" (Pocillopora verrucosa, Stylophora pistillata, small branching acroporids, and Isopora) were common, coral cover never exceeded 30%, and only 10-15 species could be found above 5 m.
• One transect was scored at this station (19%; n = 1, so no SE; Living Oceans Foundation per-transect benthic data); it is the expedition's station value printed above.

Stressors

The needle corals told a bleaker story: sickly Seriatopora hystrix everywhere, and at 15.5 m every S. hystrix and S. caliendrum colony looked bleached, sick, or dying. No crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) or other corallivores evident.

Fish and other fauna

One frame catches that escort, two gray reef sharks cruising a few meters off a rubble-strewn slope (e.g., Image 1).

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Comparisons with other data

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

Other notes

Position: Anderson's sheet and the expedition's planning table repeat AUYD109's coordinates for this station; the expedition's station map and the 933-site table place it at the reef's northeast corner, where the pin sits.