State of the Reef Report 2004: Corals

Abstract

The Great Barrier Reef is part of a global centre of coral diversity located in the Indo-Pacific and includes more than 70 hard coral (Scleractinia) genera. Coral reefs are a significant component of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area with over 2900 individual coral reefs stretching for more than 2300 kilometers. Some 350 coral species inhabit the Great Barrier Reef compared with the global maximum of about 450 species found in Indonesian and Philippine waters. Most of the hard coral species on the Great Barrier Reef are also found on coral reefs elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific, but 10 species are considered endemic, being found only on the Great Barrier Reef. Soft corals (Alcyonaria – octocorallia) are also an important component of many reefs, however their taxonomy is not well documented and less is known about their ecology and condition.