Healthy reef on GBR?

[Thrawn7]

I just came off a ProDive liveaboard in Cairns which does Flynn and Miln reefs. The reef above 5m is in a decent shape but below that it seems there's a fair amount of dead coral rubble in some sites. There's lots of "white" coral as well but its hard to tell if its bleaching or not.. it probably isn't. But there's still plenty of good looking coral around and even some bright colorful corals that I have not seen elsewhere before.

Overall the reef condition is reasonable and comparable to Asian destinations (I've done Komodo, Bali and Sipadan recently).. not particularly fantastic.. but certainly not a pile of rubble either.

I'm more disappointed with the general lack of "fishiness". Hardly any schooling fish... few medium/big stuff. Diversity isn't particularly great either. I'd say roughly comparable to Bali but well short of Komodo and Sipadan.

This could be because nearly all GBR boats cater primarily to new divers (half the divers on the boat are doing Open Water) and they only go to the benign "easy" dive sites. Diving conditions is certainly the easiest I've ever done.

 

[tamas970]

Thank you for the comprehensive report! Large share of novice population also means lots of "this is fantastic" reports from them which is of little use for me. I trust the survey then which indicated significant damage in the north and really healthy/unaffected reef only in the very south.