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Status of Near-Shore Reefs of the Great Barrier Reef 2004

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Status of Near-Shore Reefs of the Great Barrier Reef 2004 Status of Near-Shore Reefs of the Great Barrier Reef 2004 Hugh Sweatman, Angus Thompson, Steve Delean, Johnston Davidson and Steve Neale Australian Institute of Marine Science CRC Reef Research Centre Project C1.14 Published on behalf of the Australian Government’s Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility © Australian Institute of Marine Science National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Sweatman, Hugh. Status of near-shore reefs of the Great Barrier Reef 2004 Bibliography. ISBN 9781921359019 (pdf.) 1. Reef ecology – Queensland – Great Barrier Reef. 2. Coral reef ecology – Queensland – Great Barrier Reef. 3. Great Barrier Reef (Qld.) – Environmental aspects. I. CRC Reef Research Centre. II. Australian Institute of Marine Science. III. Title. 577.789 This report should be cited as: Sweatman, H., Thompson, A., Delean, S., Davidson, J. and Neale S (2007) Status of Near-Shore Reefs of the Great Barrier Reef 2004. Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility Research Report Series. Reef and Rainforest Research Centre Limited, Cairns (169 pp.). Published by the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre Limited for the Australian Government’s Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility. The Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility (MTSRF) is part of the Australian Government’s Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities programme. The MTSRF is represented in North Queensland by the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre Limited (RRRC). The aim of the MTSRF is to ensure the health of North Queensland’s public environmental assets – particularly the Great Barrier Reef and its catchments, tropical rainforests including the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, and the Torres Strait – through the generation and transfer of world class research and knowledge sharing. This report was funded by the CRC Reef Research Centre, a knowledge-based partnership of coral reef ecosystem managers, researchers and industry, which wound up operations in June 2006. This publication is copyright. The Copyright Act 1968 permits fair dealing for study, research, information or educational purposes subject to inclusion of a sufficient acknowledgement of the source. The Biodiversity Monitoring Toolkit proformas are available for copying and use by community groups and revegetation practitioners, provided sufficient acknowledgement is given. The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Australian Government or the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that the contents of this publication are factually correct, the Commonwealth does not accept responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of the contents, and shall not be liable for any loss or damage that may be occasioned directly or indirectly through the use of, or reliance on, the contents of this publication. This report is available for download from the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre website: http://www.rrrc.org.au/publications. Published in June 2007 Status of Near-Shore Reefs of the Great Barrier Reef 2004 Acknowledgements Many individuals contributed to our ability to document species lists for the sites visited, in particular: Staff at the Museum of Tropical Queensland, especially Dr Carden Wallace for her tutelage and identification of samples, and Barbara Done for her thoroughness in curating our collection, and also Annika Noreen for her help in identification of samples. Cathie Page and Kate Osborne also provided valuable help in the identification of near-shore corals in the early stages of the project, and Dr John “Charlie” Veron helped with the identification of several particularly difficult samples. The AIMS marine section aided the project by facilitating fieldwork, often at short notice. Greg Coleman ensured the quality of data through the development of data entry tools and maintenance of the database. Our thanks also to Mike Emslie for some long periods of boat work and to Fiona Merida for field assistance during initial sampling. Drs Terry Done, Britta Schaffelke and Katharina Fabricius waded through the draft report and suggested many changes that were invisible to the authors. i Sweatman et al. Contents Acknowledgements.................................................................................................................i List of Figures........................................................................................................................iv List of Tables ..........................................................................................................................v Executive Summary .............................................................................................................vii 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................1 2. Surveys and Methods ......................................................................................................5 2.1. Survey Locations .......................................................................................................5 2.2. Statistical Analysis .....................................................................................................9 Univariate analyses ...................................................................................................9 Index of relative reef status .....................................................................................10 Multivariate analysis of community structure...........................................................10 2.3. Data Location...........................................................................................................11 2.4. Comparison of Species Present in 2004 with Past Surveys ....................................12 3. Results ............................................................................................................................13 3.1. Spatial and Depth Differences in the Benthos .........................................................13 Variation in the cover in groups of benthic organisms.............................................13 Variation in species richness of hard corals ............................................................14 Variation in the abundance of hard and soft coral colonies.....................................14 3.2. Regional Abundance of Individual Genera ..............................................................15 Abundance of individual genera by depth ...............................................................16 Variation in the size distributions of hard and soft coral colonies ............................16 Variation in the density of recruit-sized coral colonies.............................................19 Summary of univariate analyses .............................................................................21 3.3. Analysis of Community Structure.............................................................................22 Association between benthic community structure and environmental and spatial variables.......................................................................................................25 3.4. Species Distributions ...............................................................................................28 Changes in species distributions over time .............................................................28 3.5. Review of Long-term Data Sets from Near-shore Reefs .........................................30 4. Detailed Descriptions of Reef Communities in Each Survey Location ....................39 4.1. How to Read Reef Pages ........................................................................................39 Cape Tribulation North ............................................................................................40 Cape Tribulation South............................................................................................42 Snapper Island (front reef).......................................................................................44 Snapper Island (back reef) ......................................................................................46 Wentworth Reef.......................................................................................................48 Double Island...........................................................................................................50 High Island (front reef).............................................................................................52 High Island (back reef) ............................................................................................54 Frankland Islands (front reef) ..................................................................................56 ii Status of Near-Shore Reefs of the Great Barrier Reef 2004 Frankland Islands (back reef) ..................................................................................58 King Reef.................................................................................................................60 Dunk Island (front reef)............................................................................................62 Dunk Island (back reef) ...........................................................................................64 Pandora Reef ..........................................................................................................66 Nelly Bay
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