| | REEF CHATTROPICAL NORTH QUEENSLAND
December 2017 | |
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| | | Offshore coral nursery
Live coral fragments have been successfully collected and installed in the first offshore coral nursery being trialled on the Great Barrier Reef in a bid to regenerate damaged areas of the world's largest reef. The Reef Restoration Foundation has a permit from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) to establish a pilot research offshore coral nursery at Fitzroy Island. The not-for-profit social enterprise sought and obtained significant tourism industry and scientific support for the coral gardening and restoration research project, which will regenerate degraded coral reefs.
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| | Spotlight on The Pinnacle by Spirit of Freedom
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| | Location: Great Detached Reef, near Raine Island at the top of Queensland. Visibility: 60 metres | |
| | Site: The Pinnacle is an incredible coral tower covered with soft corals, fan and whip coral, which drops to 36 metres. Masses of marine life can be found in and around it with a night dive revealing twin spot lionfish, nudibranchs, flatworms and shrimp.
Health: UV torches revealed some isolated corals spawning with streamers stretching from soft corals that glowed green in the purple light during the coral spawn in November. Underwater photographer and publisher of Alert Diver magazine Stephen Frink captured this rare image of an anemone spawning at The Pinnacle. He said the November trip to the remote Far Northern section of the Great Barrier Reef visited some of the healthiest reef systems he had seen in his past five years of diving. >> See more of Stephen’s images from the Spirit of Freedom trip.
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| | People on the ReefMarine biologist Gareth Phillips has been fascinated with coral regeneration since he started his career some 18 years ago growing coral in a laboratory in South Africa. These days he has swapped the laboratory for the Great Barrier Reef in Tropical North Queensland where the annual coral spawn puts on a spectacular regeneration show each year. “I joined a crew documenting the | |
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| | recent coral spawn and saw the most amazing spectacle. Corals releasing egg parcels and clouds of genetic material, like a fog rising from the huge boulder corals,” Mr Phillips said. >> Read more | |
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| | Reef Initiatives on the LandCommunity groups collected 2.62 tonnes of marine debris from Wet Tropics beach clean ups in a single year. The majority of the 35,067 items were plastics which pose a threat to marine life. This activity and others such as community tree planting, assessing fish stocks and working with farmers to improve land management practices are being undertaken on the ground to improve waterway health and the quality of water flowing into the Reef. They are documented in The Wet Tropics Report Card 2017 which assesses the health of Wet Tropics waterways in 2015-2016. | |
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Photo courtesy: Great Barrier Reef Legacy.
Coral that survived bleaching has been taken from Queensland’s far northern Great Barrier Reef to a laboratory in Townsville to see if it holds the answers to restoring reefs. Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) researchers were among a group of scientists taking part in a Great Barrier Reef Legacy trip in the hope of finding surviving coral from the most severely heat stressed reefs off the northern cape. AIMS coral biologist Dr Neal Cantin said Queensland’s far northern corals, which had lived through two serious bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, may help us understand how to grow new reefs. >> Read more
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| | Getting Social on the Reef | | | |
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Photo courtesy: Calypso Reef Imagery Centre Two green turtles returning to the Great Barrier Reef after being cared for at the Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre became big hits on social media last week. Franklin and Woodson were released from the Sunlover Reef Cruises Moore Reef pontoon. >> Watch footage here | |
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Photo courtesy: GBRMPA Ramping up compliance and protecting resilient reefs are among the top 10 actions that will be used to manage the Great Barrier Reef under the Reef Blueprint launched last week. Developed by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Australia’s lead managers of the Great Barrier Reef, the Blueprint responds to the unprecedented pressures faced on the Reef over the past two years. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority Chairman Dr Russell Reichelt said innovative approaches and new technologies would now be business as usual on the Great Barrier Reef. “The Blueprint signals a new direction for managing this great natural icon and outlines 10 key initiatives for Reef management, focused on actions that deliver maximum benefits for Reef resilience,” Dr Reichelt said. >> Read more | |
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| | WE INVITE YOU TO CONTRIBUTE CONTENT TO REEF CHAT! Reef Chat is distributed on the 3rd Thursday of each month. Please submit your Great Barrier Reef news to Reef Chat before the 2nd Thursday of every month. | |
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