Corals of 5-Beach Bay

5-Beach Bay is a large marine and terrestrial protected area in the central Great Barrier Reefon the north side of Yunbenun (Magnetic Island), traditional country of the Wulgurukaba First Nations people.

There are no roads here, and access by boat is the only way into this wilderness area.There are fringing coral reefs in several of the bays, most notably Wilson Cove and Maud Bay, however turbidity is usually high which makes visual assessment of the coral community difficult.

Last week, we had ideal conditions for a snap survey as light winds coincided with neap tides giving 3-4m underwater visibility, and we were able to obtain geotagged survey imagery and some video of the coral community in Wilson Cove and Maud Bay during training operations for our Sea Women Great Barrier Reef program.

We were pleasantly surprised to see lush coral communities with a high biodiversity at both sites, with plentiful staghorn and plate Acropora colonies. This reinforces our findings from other inshore sites in this region, which is that turbid water conditions with high sediment loads are not necessarily an impediment to the growth of corals on these reefs. Many of these species are likely to be inshore specialists not found on the clear water reefs of the middle and outer GBR, and we look forward to upcoming taxonomic reviews of the coral assemblages from these areas.

We thank our program partners which make this work possible:
The Jock Clough Marine Foundation
Hughes Charitable Foundation
OM Digital Solutions Australia
Sarah & Sebastian
The Good Beer Co
Sobah Brewing
People4Ocean
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