{"id":497715,"date":"2026-02-25T03:33:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T03:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/497715\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T03:33:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T03:33:11","slug":"citizen-scientists-discover-a-great-barrier-reef-coral-giant-like-a-rolling-meadow-great-barrier-reef","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/497715\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizen scientists discover a Great Barrier Reef coral giant \u2018like a rolling meadow\u2019 | Great Barrier Reef"},"content":{"rendered":"

Citizen scientists have discovered what they believe is one of the largest coral colonies ever documented on the Great Barrier Reef<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The coral spans approximately 111 metres in maximum length and covers an estimated area of 3,973 sq m \u2013 about half the size of a soccer field.<\/p>\n

The Pavona clavus coral was first found by Jan Pope in waters a few hours offshore from Cairns. It was identified as part of the Great Reef Census, a citizen science project run by Citizens of the Reef.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite glassy and I could see this very strange pattern in the water,\u201d Pope said. \u201cWhen I jumped in the water, it became obvious to me that I\u2019d found something, that I\u2019d never seen anything like it before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jan Pope and her daughter, Sophie Kalkowski-Pope, survey reefs from their family vessel as part of the Great Reef Census. Photograph: Citizens of the Reef<\/p>\n

Pope, who has been diving on the Great Barrier Reef for 35 years, described it as \u201ca very surreal underwater landscape. It looks like a rolling meadow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pope\u2019s daughter, Sophie Kalkowski-Pope, surveyed the site with her mother a fortnight later. \u201cWe had no idea that something so significant was right here on our doorstep,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kalkowski-Pope, marine operations coordinator at Citizens of the Reef, said the census project used crowd-sourced images to monitor coral cover across the Great Barrier Reef. The organisation estimates it has surveyed a quarter of the reef since 2020.<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

An aim of the project is to identify key source reefs \u2013 \u201chotspots of resilience\u201d that can supply other reefs with larvae when they spawn, Kalkowski-Pope said.<\/p>\n

The curator of corals at the Queensland<\/a> Museum, Dr Tom Bridge, who was not involved in the research, said Pavona clavus was an uncommon and \u201cquite hard to find\u201d coral. \u201cBut where it is [found], it can form really, really ridiculously huge colonies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In 2024, a coral of the same species, measuring just over 1,000 sq m<\/a>, was discovered in the waters of Solomon Islands.<\/p>\n

Bridge, also a senior lecturer at James Cook University, said: \u201cVery large coral colonies are going to be exceedingly rare because we\u2019re finding bleaching is increasing in severity<\/a> but also in frequency.\u201d<\/p>\n

The coral find will need to be tested to determine if it is one single organism. Photograph: Jan Pope\/Citizens of the Reef<\/p>\n

For a coral colony that was dozens or hundreds of years old, the chances of escaping bleaching conditions or being tough enough to withstand hot waters were diminishing, he said.<\/p>\n

But Bridge added genetic testing was required to confirm whether the Cairns coral truly was one colony \u2013 that is, all formed from one original polyp.<\/p>\n

Another possibility is instead of being one individual, the coral consists of multiple colonies that settled in close proximity and coalesced together as they grew.<\/p>\n

For genetic testing, \u201cwe would need over 300 individual samples from across the colony because it\u2019s so big,\u201d Kalkowski-Pope said.<\/p>\n

To estimate its size, the coral colony was mapped using a technique known as photogrammetry, in which photographs of the coral from the water\u2019s surface were stitched together into a 3D model.<\/p>\n

Serena Mou, a research engineer at the QUT Centre for Robotics, described the mapping as \u201ca bit of an interactive process\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe coral ended up being bigger than what Sophie initially thought,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Bridge said the coral species, now classified as Pavona clavus, was set to be reclassified as part of an overhaul of coral taxonomy.<\/p>\n

Another citizen science project called Map the Giants<\/a>, run by the University of Milano Bicocca, tracks giant coral colonies around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Citizen scientists have discovered what they believe is one of the largest coral colonies ever documented on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-497715","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}