Great Barrier Reef Monitoring

[Hugh Sweatman]

Long-term Monitoring of the Great Barrier Reef, Status Report 4

This document is now available as a series of Acrobat (pdf) files from the 
Australian Institute of Marine Science's web page.

http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/research/reef-monitoring/ltm/mon-statrep4/statrep4.html

[Note: mail programs may nullify links to  this URL by wrapping the 
text.  Alternatively, follow the links to "Reef monitoring" from the AIMS 
home page, [www.aims.gov.au] and look under "Reports"]

The program makes annual surveys of sites on 48 reefs spread over 8 degrees 
of latitude. The reefs are chosen to span the major physical and biological 
gradients: coast to ocean and north to south. Reef fishes, benthic 
organisms and the crown-of-thorns starfish are surveyed.

The report summarises the status of reef assemblages by region. There are 
also sections on the impact of coral bleaching in 1998 and the effects of 
Tropical Cyclone Rona which passed north of Cairns in 1999.

Details of the status of individual reefs are not included in the report, 
but are available on the AIMS web page.

The AIMS LTM Program is placing increasing emphasis on reporting via the 
WWW.  Also available are Interactive Data Summaries over different 
geographic and time scales, a page giving the most current information on 
crown-of-thorns starfish populations,  summaries of results of recent 
survey trips and Standard Operating Procedure documents.  The LTMP Index 
page is:

www.aims.gov.au/reef-monitoring

A limited number of  printed copies of the report are available.


Hugh Sweatman
Long Term Monitoring Program,
Australian Institute of Marine Science,
PMB3 Townsville MC, Qld 4810
Australia
ph: (07) 4753 4470 / +61 7 4753 4470 [GMT +10]
faxes: (07) 4753 4288 / 4772 5852
h.sweatman at aims.gov.au   web: http//www.aims.gov.au/