Where Is the Great Barrier Reef Located?
Where is the Great Barrier Reef located? The Great Barrier Reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the northeast coast of Queensland in Australia. Let's learn more about the location of the Great Barrier Reef, as well as what it is composed of, how it formed, and what is threatening it.
The 2600 kilometre (1,600 miles) long Great Barrier Reef is located between the Torres Strait in the north and two islands in the south: Lady Elliot Island and Fraser Island. It is a reef system and is made up of over 2900 individual reefs. It also has 900 islands and covers 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 square miles).
The Great Barrier Reef can be located from space and is bigger than the Great Wall of China. It is the biggest structure on earth that is made of living things and the only one that is visible from space. It is one of the seven natural wonders of the world.
How Reefs Are Formed
So, why is the Great Barrier Reef located where it is? Conditions necessary for a reef to form are clean shallow water that has a temperature between 18 and 30 degrees Celsius and sunlight. Reefs are made up of coral colonies. Each coral polyp has algae and each helps out the other. The photosynthesis of the algae helps the polyp form a coral skeleton. This is the foundation on which the colonies grow.
Once the skeleton is made, the algae, or zooxanthellae, produce calcium carbonate to act as a cement to stick two coral skeletons together. Reefs have to form on a rigid surface, so they form on rocky islands or old reefs that have died. The Great Barrier Reef started forming thousands of years ago. As the climate changed and the sea level rose, the Australian continental shelf would be flooded. This allowed the reef to begin growing. Reefs grow very slowly at a pace of several inches a year.
Different Kinds of Reefs
The Great Barrier Reef is located in the perfect place to act as a buffer between the strong waves of the Pacific Ocean and the coast of northeastern Australia When a reef functions as a barrier, it is called a "barrier reef."
Another kind of reef is called a "fringing reef." This kind of reef forms in shallow waters near a coast, like in a lagoon. The difference between a barrier reef and a fringing reef is that the fringing reef has shallower water and is closer to shore.
The third kind of reef is an atoll. It is a circular reef that usually has a lagoon in the center. The water from the lagoon covers the island and the reef grows in layers on top of the island. Some parts of the Great Barrier Reef have islands made of this coral sand.
Protection of the Great Barrier Reef
So, now that we know where the Great Barrier Reef is located and why it is located there, it is also important to understand why this is important. The Great Barrier Reef has:
- 400 species of coral
- 2000 different kinds of fish
- 4000 species of mollusk
Most of it is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park which regulates the human use of it. This is extremely important as the reef is used as a breeding ground for humpback whales that migrate from Antarctica and is home to hundreds of animals, like the endangered Green Sea Turtle and the Dugong (Sea Cow).
The greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef is global warming. As the ocean water temperature rises, coral bleaching occurs. This means that the algae dies, which causes the coral polyps to turn white and soon die. If the temperature of the ocean rises only 1.5 degrees C as most scientists are predicting, we could lose 95% of the living coral from the Great Barrier Reef by the year 2050. This would have extreme consequences, as the reef would no longer protect the coast, and all the animals that live on and around the reef, like dolphins, sea turtles, rays, and birds, to name just a few, would have their habitat disappear.