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AIMS Cross-Shelf Series Photo Transects - Pandora, Rib, John Brewer, Myrmidon Reefs Coral Communities from 1980 to 2005

Created 23/06/2025

Updated 23/06/2025

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Starting in the early 1980s, thirty-two permanent photographed sites were established by AIMS to learn about the dynamic behavior of coral communities in the full variety of reef-zones from sheltered nearshore reefs in turbid waters through to the slopes and surf zones of outer reefs, each of which has its own distinctive assemblage of corals. With allied field studies, it was established that in the last two decades of the 20th Century, GBR coral communities exhibited substantial resilience (in terms of restoration of prior percent cover and composition) following disturbances such as floods, crown-of-thorns starfish and cyclone-generated waves. There is presently little basis for setting resilience targets for coral reefs, especially in relation to the great variety of environmental settings and reef-types within the Great Barrier Reef. This project will help scientists provide a much stronger evidence base for the setting of targets and evaluating contemporaneous changes compared to more benign years of late last century. A number of AIMS ecological studies in the 1980s focused on this series of reefs, distributed across the continental near AIMS headquarters, Townsville. There are three to six photo-transects per reef, and each photographed up to 19 years between 1980 and 2005. Access to the sites was extremely weather and tide dependent, which accounts for differences among the sites in their frequency of visitation. For illustrated examples of this series, see Introduction to the AIMS Cross Shelf Series, available from the links below. Pandora Reef is a 'turbid coastal reef' in waters that often gets stirred up and made muddy by south-east winds.

Rib and John Brewer are 'mid-shelf' reefs where the water is rarely turbid.

Myrmidon Reef (an 'outer-shelf reef') sits way out in clear waters, pounded by massive waves from the Coral Sea.

In Done (1982), seventeen coral community types were distinguished and named after characteristic dominant species. The communities displayed patterns of distribution at two spatial scales - a between reef scale and a within reef scale (i.e. the zonation of communities into characteristic areas on individual reefs. The patterns were distinctive, despite the considerable overlaps in the species composition of the communities defined. However, some subsets of the seventeen communities may represent stages in a succession which takes place over a time scale of decades to centuries. The photo-transects described here were established to investigate this proposition in this area with a history of severe and aperiodic natural disturbances (viz. cyclones, Acanthaster outbreaks, and coral bleaching).

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title AIMS Cross-Shelf Series Photo Transects - Pandora, Rib, John Brewer, Myrmidon Reefs Coral Communities from 1980 to 2005
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/46aee8b4-fa3d-4772-84df-25a8d804c2c0
Contact Point
Australian Ocean Data Network
reception@aims.gov.au
Reference Period 04/10/2022
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    146.4366667,
    -18.81408333
  ],
  "type": "Point"
}
Data Portal Australian Oceans Data Network

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Australian Oceans Data Network "AIMS Cross-Shelf Series Photo Transects - Pandora, Rib, John Brewer, Myrmidon Reefs Coral Communities from 1980 to 2005". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://catalogue.aodn.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/aims-cross-shelf-series-photo-transects-pandora-rib-john-brewer-myrmidon-reefs-coral-commu-2005