Coral Dynamics at Blue Bum Bommie

3 years of coral growth, damage and recovery around Blue Bum Bommie at Geoffrey Bay, Yunbenun, Magnetic Island. #GreatBarrierReef

There are many different growth strategies in the corals on tropical reefs, from slow growing massive colonies like the Blue Bum Porities featured here, to fast growing branching Acroporid corals with staghorn and table morphologies. The massive corals may only grow 2cm per year, but they are heavy and resistant to cyclone storm waves. In contrast, the branching corals may grow 20-30cm per year, but their fragile skeletons are easily broken and may indeed be strewn around the reef by large waves.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, as this 3-year sequence shows a pile of staghorn coral fragments deposited at the left side of the blue Porites after Tropical Cyclone Kirrily (January 25th 2024) survived and continued to grow in their new location. Also a large section of the Acropora kenti table colony in the base of the crack broke off in the storm, but it too recovered and is continuing to expand.

As we have said many times, coral reefs are extremely dynamic ecosystems, and regular surveys and monitoring of fixed locations are necessary to understand how reefs change through time, and in particular, how they recover from the regular disturbances such as cyclones, floods and bleaching events that are a feature of this North Queensland coastline.

If you would like to dive further into this topic, please consider joining our ReefCloud.Ai volunteer team that analyses reef survey imagery from more than 260 sites around the Great Barrier Reef and Papua New Guinea! Just send us a DM or email to info@coralseafoundation.net and we will get you onboard.

coralseafoundation.net

#coralseafoundation #coral #coralreef #reefalive #reefrecovery #marinescience #marineconservation #Yunbenun #magneticisland #cyclonekirrily