Gowrie Cove Before & After Cyclone Kirrily

Cyclones cause patchy damage to corals and coral reefs. This damage occurs at multiple spatial scales, from a few metres within a reefscape, to a few hundred metres within a bay, to tens of kilometres between whole reefs or islands.
On January 25th 2024, the passage of category 2 Cyclone Kirrily over the top of Yunbenun, Magnetic Island, caused considerable patchy damage to the corals and the reef matrix itself at most sites around the island. This short video sequence of the same freedive line through Gowrie Cove filmed before and 12 days after (6th February 2024) the cyclone provides a great example of how patchy the small-scale damage can be. Some corals have survived with only some branches snapped off, while just nearby, whole coral colonies and sections of the reef matrix itself have been scoured away by heavy wave action.

While all bays around the island showed plenty of evidence of physical damage to corals and scouring of the seafloor by wave action, there are plenty of corals that remained alive, and these will kick start the process of reef recovery. Cyclones are very much part of the natural dynamic processes on the Great Barrier Reef, and the corals have evolved over millions of years with these acute disturbance events. However, the return time for cyclones is about 10-15 years, so we don't get many chances to study them, and we now have a very important window of time to collect information on the winners and losers in these sorts of severe, infrequent impact events.

Before video: 6th May 2022.
After Video : 6th February 2024, 12 days after Cyclone Kirrily.

Location: Gowrie Cove, Magnetic Island.
Freedive line: 19° 6.888'S 146° 52.914'E

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