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We've just had a great dive
surveying the coral communities of
West Mont(?) Island.
In the Kimberley, I'm finding the communities
are very heterogeneous so they
changes a lot, there's a lot variability, but there
are some general trends, for example
on the inshore, in the
turbid water, it's dominated by
corals called faviids, and then on
the offshore and midshelf region
where the water is clearer, we have
the Acropora communities which are the
typical staghorn corals
But there's also some sites
that just don't play by the rules.
Like here on Montelivid(?) in the
Bonaparte Archipelago
it's dirty water, it's quite turbid
with a lot of particulate matter
but there's huge communities of these
branching Acropora down there
this is very fascinating, this is
the first of these sites that we've found
so far on this inshore
section of the Kimberley
that they're having their tentacles out
during the day and they're feeding on
particulate matter in the water
so they're feeding heterotrophically
rather than autotrophically
which they do offshore when they're feeding
on energy provided by
the zooxanthellae within their coral
skeletons, so photosynthesising
by the sun.
So this is an excellent community here, very
interesting, a very diverse
mixed assemblage
absolutely fascinating.