Reef Check Australia’s Townsville Region Annual Report 2019 – 2020
The Reef Check Australia is proud to share this 2019-2020 regional Annual report for the Townsville region. Over the 2020 financial year RCA volunteers and staff completed 35 surveys across 22 sites at Magnetic Island, Offshore Townsville and in the Palm Island Group. This report is a subset of the full GBR Annual report which covers all of our RCA sites across the GBR.
Some key findings include:
- Live coral cover in the Townsville/Palm Island region averaged 38.1% as opposed to our GBR wide mean of 35.7%. across all sites, times and locations.
- Live coral cover consisted of 31.6% hard coral and 6.5% soft coral.
- Maximum hard coral cover was recorded at John Brewer Reef (58.8%, n=3) while the lowest recording of hard coral cover was at nearby Lodestone Reef (12.5%, n=4) demonstrating the effects of recent COTS outbreaks. Soft coral cover contributed was prominent at two sites in the Palm Island Group; Pelorus Island (25.8%) & Orpheus Island, Cattle Bay (21.9%).
We had amazing support from operators and volunteers across the Reef and cannot thank our partners and supporters enough. Data from our reporting contributed to the Dry Tropics Partnership for Healthy Waters Report Card (Burdekin).
Preparation of this summary report has been completed as part of Reef Ecologic’s Integrated Coral Reef Citizen Science Program funded by the partnership between the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation with additional support from the Townsville City Council through their Creek to Coral program.
Download the Townsville Regional Report here https://www.dropbox.com/s/88diosno3ntjb0y/2019-2020%20RCA%20Townsville%20Region%20Annual%20Report%20.pdf?dl=0
Download the full GBR Annual Report 2019 – 2020 from HERE – https://www.dropbox.com/s/bnyuuxantjkkkc2/2019-2020%20GBR%20Annual%20Report%20FINAL.pdf?dl=0
For more details contact Jenni Calcraft on jenni@reefcheckaustralia.org
