Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems of the Great Barrier Reef Are Understudied and Underexplored

Mesophotic Coral Reef Ecosystems in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area

Lower Mesophotic Coral Communities (60-125 m Depth) of the Northern Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea

Mesophotic coral ecosystems in the Indo-Pacific remain relatively unexplored, particularly at lower mesophotic depths (≥60 m), despite their potentially large spatial extent. Here, we used a remotely operated vehicle to conduct a qualitative assessment of the zooxanthellate coral community at lower mesophotic depths (60-125 m) at 10 different locations in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and ...

Mesophotic Coral Reef Ecosystems of the US Virgin Islands and the Caribbean

Mesophotic coral reefs (MPR) are some of the least studied and most poorly understood light dependant coral habitats in the world. These reefs form in deep, dimly lit waters around the globe in what has been called the “Twilight Zone”. Available data for the Caribbean and extrapolation from bathymetric data suggest that these environments are extensive between 30 and 100 m. These systems are sp...

Declining coral calcification on the Great Barrier Reef.

Reef-building corals are under increasing physiological stress from a changing climate and ocean absorption of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. We investigated 328 colonies of massive Porites corals from 69 reefs of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in Australia. Their skeletal records show that throughout the GBR, calcification has declined by 14.2% since 1990, predominantly because extension...

Recovery from disturbance of coral and reef fish communities on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia

Coral reefs are consistently and increasingly subject to acute disturbance events that often lead to a reduction in live coral cover with concomitant effects on the diversity and abundance of coral reef fishes. Here we examine changes in both hard coral and reef-fish assemblages over 15 yr following major losses of coral from exposed reefs in 2 widely separated sectors of the Great Barrier Reef...