Faculty in the Field: Ribbon Reef

Photography by Stephen Kajiura, Ph.D., professor,
Charles E. Schmidt College of Science

The lush, healthy coral cover in the Great Barrier Reef provides a rich habitat that supports a tremendous diversity of marine life. In this photo there are multiple species of hard corals in the sunlight dappled, clear, shallow waters of Agincourt Reef, on the western edge of the Coral Sea. These ribbon reefs form a barrier between the Pacific Ocean and the eastern coast of Australia. The biodiversity on the Great Barrier Reef is among the highest of any ecosystem on the planet and can thus serve as a metric to monitor the effects of species loss due to global climate change. This photo was taken while monitoring fish diversity on the reef.