Admittedly, coral is something that up until very recently I had overlooked. I spent the majority of my time trying to photograph the larger animals of the reef and neglected the very building blocks that allowed life to exist there. Over millions of years the coral species have developed a survival technique to outsmart fish that live within them. Their reproductive cycle is timed in unison with neighbouring coral colonies. That way, when they release their eggs into the water column, enough survive the onslaught of hungry fish and get evenly distributed throughout the surrounding reef, allowing new life to emerge and regeneration to occur.

This spawning event usually occurs within a week of the first full moon of autumn, a time where traditionally light offshore winds help disperse the floating coral spawn across the lagoons and into the south-flowing Leeuwin current through which the coral spawn can sink and begin its crucial job of growing new reefs.

In 2022, the coral spawned as expected. On a night of magic on the reef, the water column filled with millions of pinky-orange eggs suspended in the inky black waters, slowly floating towards the surface. Unseasonal onshore winds were blowing that night due to a cyclone that was sitting off the Ningaloo coast. Unfortunately, the weather continued for several days, and the onshore winds trapped the floating spawn mass near the beach in Bills Bay. This event, coupled with very little swell, made for the perfect storm as the reef was unable to flush out the nutrient load in time. Eventually, the coral spawn sunk to the floor of the bay and began to rot. This turned the water anoxic, suffocating thousands of fish and rendering the water a dark muddy brown colour. The first night after the spawn, more than 16,000 dead fish washed up on the shores of Coral Bay.

For the next couple of days, the weather pattern stayed the same. Wave after wave, dead fish washed up on shore having suffocated in the stagnant waters. It wasn’t until almost ten days later that the water had settled enough that could see through the water to the corals below. Although expected, it was gut wrenching to see the destruction that this event had caused, killing off almost every single coral colony within a two kilometre stretch of the bay. A couple of the larger Porites stony coral species had managed to cling to their lives but the remainder of the reef was bleached beyond repair.

Corals are complex. A singular coral is made up of a colony of thousands of small individual animals called polyps. They are able to gather up to 20% of their food by filter feeding in the water column, grabbing whatever floats their way with small tentacles. They mostly catch plankton and the microscopic larvae of small fish and crustaceans but I’ve often seen shrimp in their grasp big enough to see with the naked eye. These individual polyps form the ‘stony’ part of the coral by building up a calcium carbonate skeleton over time. It’s this skeleton that makes the coral so susceptible to ocean acidification. It’s also the reason that corals grow so slowly.