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Article that just tells you about the reef

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The history of the Great Barrier Reef is a long and diverse one, where many generations of coral have built a habitat that eventually was discovered and then later settled by humans.

The Great Barrier Reef is an extremely ancient, enormous host of living things, composed of living coral growing on dead coral dating back perhaps as much as twenty million years. Many generations of dead coral have built themselves into great walls of stone covered in a diverse range of living organisms such as coral, algae, anemones, sponges, fish, worms, starfish, turtles, molluscs, snakes, crustaceans, and an extraordinary array of thousands of species of plants and animals.

Although there is no direct physical evidence, first human contact with the reef must've occurred for some time. We know that Aboriginal people occupied great parts of the Australian continent for around 40,000 years. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have fished and hunted its waters and navigated between the islands of the reef region.

For large parts of that time, during periods of glacial activity, the area of the Great Barrier Reef was dry with large flat coastal plains. This area is at a depth of less than one hundred metres below sea level today.

More information is available about the activities of early Europeans who came into contact with the eastern coast of Australia. Almost from the first, there are written descriptions of the Great Barrier Reef by those who saw it. North Queensland was probably the first part of the continent seen by Europeans, but one of the last to be settled.

It is now widely believed that the east coast of Australia was first sighted around 1522 by a Portuguese expedition, probably led by Cristovao de Mendonca. Willem Jansz in the Duyfken in about March 1606 charted the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, starting forty years of maritime exploration in Australian waters by the Dutch. Later Luis de Torres sighted the islands of Torres Strait while sailing from east to west along the southern coast of Papua.

The earliest documentary evidence of Europeans sighting the Great Barrier Reef was French. Commanding the ships La Boudeuse and L'Etoile On 6 June 1768, Louis de Bougainville approached Australia from the east, encountering Bougainville Reef near Cooktown. Confronted by rough surf in the open ocean, and short of food, Bougainville turned north toward Asia along the north coast of New Guinea, missing Australia.

These early fleeting glimpses of the Great Barrier Reef throughout the early history of the area were only minor compared to what occurred from May to August 1770, when the Endeavour under James Cook sailed the length of the Great Barrier Reef. Most of the voyage was made well inshore, probably seeing little of the Reef. However on 11 June, Cook's party became intimately acquainted with it when they struck Endeavour Reef, north of Cape Tribulation, and were forced to spend six weeks repairing the ship on shore at the site of modern Cooktown.

Due to this unexpected predicament, Cook and his scientists, the botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander and a staff of four illustrators, were able to carry out very little direct scientific observation of the Reef but as a result of Cook's voyage, the international scientific community knew that the Reef existed, and that it was of very great extent.

After all repairs were done, Cook decided to try for the open sea, but could not find a way through the natural barrier. He sailed north to Lizard Island. Landing on the island, he and his botanist, Joseph Banks, climbed to its highest point and were able to see a break in the reef large enough to permit the passage of the Endeavour. This is known as Cook's Passage.

William Bligh was the next navigator in Australia's early history to chart the Reef in the Providence. In the course of this voyage from Tahiti to the West Indies he spent two weeks of September 1792 charting passages through Torres Strait. After the establishment of the penal colony of Sydney in 1788, finding a reliable route west through the straits to the Arafura Sea and establishing communication with Asia depended on the inner passage west of the Reef.

In 1793 further surveys of the Torres Strait section of the Reef were undertaken by captains Bampton and Alt in the ships Hormuzeer and Chesterfield. The next few decades ushered in a period of surveying in northern Australian waters, usually by small naval vessels. The aim of these surveys was to improve navigational charts for Admiralty use, investigate natural resources for future economic exploitation, and to answer questions of scientific curiosity.

Between 1801 and 1803, Matthew Flinders undertook the monumental task of surveying the entire Australian coastline and at one point actually walked on what he named the 'Extensive Barrier Reefs'. It was Flinders who charted a safe passage through by sending small boats ahead to sound the depths. This passage is still known as Flinder's Passage.

Hydrographer Philip Parker King, commanding the Mermaid in 1819 and the Bathurst in 1820, carried on the methodical task of accurately charting much of the northern Reef in detail for the first time.

Today studies are carried out at a much closer level, examining the make up of the reef, what species there are, how they live and interact, whether they are resilient or vulnerable to change. However, there is still evidence of an earlier period of discovery evident on the Great Barrier Reef, with around 30 shipwreck sites of historic importance known to exist.

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History and Evolution of the Great Barrier Reef

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The history of the Great Barrier Reef is a long and diverse one, where many generations of coral have built a habitat that eventually was discovered and then later settled by humans. The Great Barrier Reef is an extremely ancient, enormous host of living things, composed of living coral growing on dead coral dating back perhaps as much as twenty million years.

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ancient giant underwater reef found in north flinders

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Australian scientists in major international discovery. Tectonic movement has pushed ancient history up to the present

In a major international discovery, three Australian scientists have located the upturned remnants of what was once a giant underwater reef - with an escarpment ten times higher than the Great Barrier Reef - in the Northern Flinders Ranges in outback South Australia.

The scientists are referring to the reef as Oodnaminta Reef, given it is located near an old hut called Oodnaminta Hut. Oodnaminta is a term from the local (Flinders Ranges) Adnyamathanha language group.

The Flinders Ranges are among a very small number of scientific sites worldwide renowned for the window they provide on Earth's ancient past.

The reef is about 650 million years old and is the only known reef complex of this age anywhere in the world. The next closest aged series of reefs found to-date are around 800 million years old and located in Arctic Canada.

And while they are yet to confirm it scientifically, the scientists - Mr Jonathan Giddings, Associate Professor Malcolm Wallace and Ms Estee Woon from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne - believe that peculiar fossils of possible multi-cellular organisms found in the reef could be the earliest examples of primitive animal life discovered to-date.

The reef existed for 5-10 million years during a period of tropical climate squeezed between two major ice age events (the so-called 'Snowball Earth' events) where ice was present even at equatorial latitudes.

This extreme climate change from ice age to tropical conditions and back to ice age occurred approximately 750-550 million years ago (hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the Earth) and is one of the most tumultuous climatic periods of Earth's history. It is a particularly intriguing period because it also coincided with the sudden and widespread appearance of very early primitive lifeforms.

This reef is an internationally significant discovery because it provides a significant step forward in showing the extent of climate change in Earth's past and the evolution of ancient reef complexes - and it also contains fossils which may be of the earliest known primitive animals" Mr Giddings said.

There is a good chance that the new fossils and organisms found in the reef will provide significant insight into the evolution of early multi-cellular life. It could prove that life took more complex forms much earlier in history than we previously thought.

A lot of people will be intrigued as to why this once underwater reef is now located in a very barren part of inland Australia. At this stage in Earth's history, the eastern coast of Australia extended north from where the Flinders Ranges now lie. The eastern part of the Australian continent, from the Flinders Ranges

through to the current eastern seaboard, was still buried under the ocean.

With the movement over millions of years of Australia's tectonic plates, the reef has now been turned 90 degrees skywards from its once horizontal position (a bit like turning the current Great Barrier Reef on its end). This has exposed the whole 1 kilometre depth of the reef, from what was once its shallow water section right down to its deep water section.

In effect, these tectonic forces have resulted in very ancient history being pushed up to the present. Today's advances in satellite imagery are also helping us to see the reef easily. Geologists had seen this mass before but had not recognised it as once being a reef.

Associate Professor Wallace said: "The fact that the reef is exposed at ground level makes it very easy for scientists to see what important geological history the reef holds. The section of the reef showing at ground level is around 20 kilometres wide, demonstrating just how big this ancient reef was. This whole section can be driven or walked along, which makes it easy for scientists to travel back through the reef's 5-10 million year history - in the space of minutes if you are driving.

"Our main work now will be to undertake further analysis of the fossils and organisms we have found, to determine just what type and stage of lifeform they represent."

Coober Pedy Regional Times

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ANCIENT GIANT UNDERWATER REEF FOUND IN NORTH FLINDERS

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Australian scientists in major international discovery. Tectonic movement has pushed ancient history up to the present In a major international discovery, three Australian scientists have located the upturned remnants of what was once a giant underwater reef - with an escarpment ten times higher than the Great Barrier Reef - in the Northern Flinders Ranges in outback South...

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shows all the different kinds of flinder reefs

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The Corals of Flinders Reef, Moreton Bay Marine Park

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The southern most Noble Staghorn Coral colonies are found at Flinders Reef part of the Moreton Bay Marine Park, in fact this remarkable reef contains at least 119 species of coral and more than 477 species of fish. The delicate corals found here require protection from anchor damage, so only use the moorings provided when visiting Flinders Reef.

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this video shows the scuba divers visit all the species and the reefs.

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Diving Flinders Reef, Moreton Island - Showreel

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Flinders reef is a small reef just north of Moreton Island, I have dived here numerous times, and it never ceases to amaze me. Such variety of life, and 9.9 time out of 10 always clear waters. Great place to dive all year round.

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there are so many different shapes and colors!

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there are sooooo many different species that live here!

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there are so many different colors!

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scuba diver having some fun with the coral!

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a small isolated reef near moreton island.the reef has more than 175 species of fish. the reef has been around for about 40,000 years. the reef is more on the dull color side but there are colorful ones.

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we are help saving the coral reefs by fishing in different spots so we dont fish illegally. we are also putting them in different spots and there normal habitats so they can grow healthy and normal.

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a series of storms can be a threat to the reefs. also, all impacts on the reef can slowly weaken its life span. other things that threaten it is climate change, poor water quality, and illegal fishing.

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humans have caused a lot of harm to flinders reefs. they are also very close to land that is 80% farmland. it has also cause the water to be less clear.