Bushy Island

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Bushy Island
Queensland
Australia Queensland location map.svg
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Bushy Island
Coordinates 20°57′S150°05′E / 20.950°S 150.083°E / -20.950; 150.083 Coordinates: 20°57′S150°05′E / 20.950°S 150.083°E / -20.950; 150.083

Bushy Island is a vegetated coral cay in Queensland, Australia in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Queensland, Australia. It is about 70 km east of Mackay. There are no other vegetated cays in the more than 600 km stretch between Bushy Island and Green Island. [1] The coral species Acropora bushyensis , one of many species in the genus Acropora , is most heavily concentrated in Bushy Island lagoon, existing only rarely elsewhere in the eastern portion of the Great Barrier Reef and not at all in the western portion. [2] The island is an accumulation of biogenic sediment similar to Heron Island, and it has been sufficiently stable to accumulate vegetation. [3] A major component of the mobile sands of Bushy Island is Foraminifera, a type of amoeboid protist. Foraminiferan sands are more easily eroded off of the cay. [4] Bushy Island is located inside the zero isobase on an elevated reef flat, onto which the cay often erodes. [5]

Coral Marine invertebrates of the class Anthozoa

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Cay small island formed on the surface of a coral reef

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Queensland North-east state of Australia

Queensland is the second-largest and third-most populous state in the Commonwealth of Australia. Situated in the north-east of the country, it is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean. To its north is the Torres Strait, with Papua New Guinea located less than 200 km across it from the mainland. The state is the world's sixth-largest sub-national entity, with an area of 1,852,642 square kilometres (715,309 sq mi).

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Acropora palmerae is a species of acroporid coral found in the northern Indian Ocean, the central Indo-Pacific, Australia, Southeast Asia, Japan, the East China Sea and the oceanic west Pacific Ocean. It is also found in Palau and the Mariana Islands, American Samoa, the Andaman Islands, the Great Barrier Reef, Okinawa Island, Mauritius, Micronesia, the Cook Islands and the Philippines. It occurs in tropical shallow reefs on flats exposed the action of strong waves and in lagoons, from depths of 0 to 12 metres. It was described by Wells in 1954.

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Acropora lokani is a species of acroporid coral that was first described by C. C. Wallace in 1994. Found in marine, shallow reefs and sheltered lagoons, it occurs at depths between 8 and 25 m. It is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, and is believed to have a decreasing population. It is not common but found over a large area, including in three regions of Indonedia, and is listed under CITES Appendix II.

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References

  1. ↑ David Hopley; Scott G. Smithers; Kevin E. Parnell (2007). The geomorphology of the Great Barrier Reef. Cambridge University Press. p. 345. ISBN   0-521-85302-8.
  2. ↑ John Edward Norwood Veron (1993). Corals of Australia and the Indo-Pacific (2 ed.). University of Hawaii Press. p. 142. ISBN   0-8248-1504-1.
  3. ↑ David Hopley; Scott G. Smithers; Kevin E. Parnell (2007). The geomorphology of the Great Barrier Reef. Cambridge University Press. p. 319. ISBN   0-521-85302-8.
  4. ↑ David Hopley; Scott G. Smithers; Kevin E. Parnell (2007). The geomorphology of the Great Barrier Reef. Cambridge University Press. p. 362. ISBN   0-521-85302-8.
  5. ↑ David Hopley; Scott G. Smithers; Kevin E. Parnell (2007). The geomorphology of the Great Barrier Reef. Cambridge University Press. p. 363. ISBN   0-521-85302-8.


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