The Coral Coast boasts the Ningaloo Reef

  Western Australia boasts the dynamic and diverse ‘Coral Coast’ from Cervantes to Exmouth. Located within the Coral Coast, the world-famous Ningaloo Marine Park is regarded as one of the only remaining pristine ocean paradises on Earth. Extending along 300km of coastline, the Ningaloo Reef (NR) has evolved to be the only extensive coral system worldwide, to fringe the western coast of a continent.  This extensive and biodynamic ecosystem has a relatively short history, on an evolutionary time-scale, of only seven to eight thousand years as its corals have strong Indo-Pacific affinities. The NR has a narrow sandy lagoon, backed by an arid coastal plain, as it lies close to the Northwest Cape and the Cape Range anticline to the west of Exmouth Gulf. Australia’s largest fringing reef is influenced by climatic aridity, cyclones, strong oceanic swells across a narrow continental shelf, ocean current upwellings, and the poleward flowing Leeuwin Current. This current is a particularly important element in the eventual formation and colonisation of the NR. It is a unique tropical current that has played a major part in the evolution of the Coral Coast’s major marine ecosystem. Year-round exposure to high energy conditions affects coral growth and reef structure, as well as influencing the diverse array of organisms that inhabit these Coral Coast waters. This blog will explore some of the evolutionary biology behind the “Coral Coast Crew”. 

                                                 image: Australian Marine Conservation Society, 2014

References:

Collins, L.B., Zhu, Z.R., Wyrwoll, K. & Eisenhauer, A. (2003) Late Quaternary structure and development      of the northern Ningaloo Reef, Australia, Sedimentary Geology, 159 (1), 81-94.

Australian Marine Conservation Society, 9 March 2014, Australian Marine Conservation Society,          <www.marineconservation.org.au/pages/northern-territ-north-west-marine-region-96.html>