Daniela M. Ceccarelli, Graham Edgar, Antonia Cooper, Andrew S. Hoey, Morgan S. Pratchett & Rick D. Stuart-Smith. Report to Parks Australia, Department of the Environment, 2019.

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• Coral reef survey methods for assessing important community elements associated with coral reefs

Executive summary

Middleton and Elizabeth Reefs are platform reefs associated with a seamount chain that extends northward from Lord Howe Island, managed by the Australian Government as part of the Lord Howe Marine Park. The reefs have been subject to a series of ecological surveys by different teams of scientists between the 1990s and 2018.

This report explicitly compares results from two independent surveys conducted simultaneously or successively at specific sites, using established protocols developed by researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, based at James Cook University (JCU), and the University of Tasmania and Reef Life Survey (RLS).