Mom and daughter discover massive coral colony

Citizen scientists — more specifically, a mother-daughter pair — have made an incredible discovery: the largest documented and mapped coral colony in the world.

This breakthrough is powered by the Great Reef Census, run by Citizens of the Reef, a global task force that identifies critical reefs for conservation and protection. And by global, they mean it — anyone can join the cause, including virtually.

“It’s all about bringing anybody and everybody who cares, who wants to help, into the mix, whether it's on the reef itself, whether you've got a boat and you go diving, … or whether you want to be a virtual volunteer somewhere on the other side of the planet,” Andy Ridley, Citizens of the Reef CEO, said. “We genuinely need your help — so get in there and give a hand.”

This coral colony was found by mother Jan Pope and daughter Sophie Kalkowski-Pope — self-proclaimed “mermaids,” they joke.

“We've been diving together for a long time, and we both love it,” Jan, who is a local underwater photographer and conservationist, said.

Sophie, marine operations coordinator at Citizens of the Reef, said that because of their experience and knowledge, they both knew the discovery was something extraordinary.

“It’s really special to have a mum that's also an underwater naturalist,” Sophie said. “And [I have] my own marine biology training.”

Jan said the day of her dive, she looked into the water and saw an amazing pattern, which she depicts as “meadows of coral.”

“Then I said to my daughter, I want to take you to this site, I want you to see this coral,” she said.

Sophie describes it as “otherworldly.”

Preliminary figures from the team put the colony at roughly 111 meters in maximum length. To show the incredible scale of this, some of the largest individual colonies of this species documented have measured at about 35 meters, according to ABC News.

“This location is one of those few places I've seen on the barrier reef that really gives us a sense of hope and wonder,” Richard Fitzpatrick, Biopixel director of photography and adjunct professorial research fellow at James Cook University, said.

The coral was confirmed and mapped using in-water measurements, surface-based photogrammetry and 3D spatial modeling. The modeling was done with the Queensland University of Technology Centre for Robotics, with imagery support from Biopixel, enabling precise long-term monitoring.

“There's a myriad of marine life. There's feather stars, crabs, shrimps, clown fish,” Fitzpatrick said. “Some corals only have a couple of species hanging in them, but this, this is almost its own ecosystem.”

The catastrophic effects of global warming have been bleaching and killing coral colonies.

(MORE: Coral reefs are dying and losing their color. This is the reason why.)

But Peter Mumby, a professor from the Marine Spatial Ecology Lab at the University of Queensland, has an idea of how this coral has managed to survive thousands of years.

“The reef location is in one of the top 10% of places that my team has predicted should have relatively low impacts from cyclones,” Mumby said.

Gunggandji Traditional Owner Frederick Lefoe, who was part of the mapping expedition, has served as a Great Barrier Reef cultural guide and works to inspire Queensland indigenous communities to care for the land and sea.

“We are bringing together Western science and cultural science,” LeFoe says. “[It] makes the world better, gets us to understand each other better.” 

Serena Mou, research engineer at QUT Centre for Robotics, says that until you get in the water and actually experience the scope of it, “there's nothing like it — it's magic.” 

This discovery leaves Sophie looking forward.

She says, “If this is right under our noses here, what else have we got to discover?”

Content writer Ada Wood enjoys exploring the stories that science and climate teach us about our natural world and how it influences the way we live in it.