'Enormous' coral find revealed off popular Sunshine Coast beaches

abc.net.au/news/coral-reefs-thriving-off-mudjimba-mooloolaba-beaches/101938708Researchers have uncovered an abundance of healthy, thriving coral along a heavily developed coastline — far beyond what the team expected when they first pitched the project.

"We looked at so many different sites — every time we put our heads underwater, the volunteers went down and they did surveys," he said."We noticed that there was an enormous amount of coral there that we didn't realise was there — and not in a couple of spots but in the 11 spots we visited.He estimated the coral cover was 54 per cent beyond what was expected.

"The challenges of COVID required us to do something positive with our time because we couldn't travel as much and we couldn't do as much," he said."The other thing is that we all are eager to help the marine environment and to take care of local reefs."The project involved 8,000 hours of training, collecting, and analysing data obtained from the underwater landscapes.

Beyond simply the amount of coral revealed by the two-year survey, the team also found little sign of crown-of-thorns starfish — which prey on coral — and almost no hint of coral bleaching.

It can’t be true. Scientists tell us it is all dying and bleaching. We are facing a mass coral extinction event!

Refugee corals fleeing the overheated waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

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