Coral community bleaching surveys by coral genus conducted at Shell Island, Kimberley, in January, April and October 2016

Coral bleaching surveys were conducted to assess how a coral reef in the Kimberley region, NW Australia, recovered from the 2016 mass bleaching event documented at this location. The surveys were conducted at Shell island (Shenton Bluff), Cygnet Bay, in both the intertidal and subtidal reef zone. To quantify coral recovery and mortality, reef-wide coral health surveys were conducted at Shell Island 6 months after peak bleaching from 18 to 21 October 2016 using the same methods that were used by Le Nohaïc et al. (2017, doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-14794-y) to assess coral health prior to and during peak bleaching (January 13–17 and April 6–9, 2016, respectively). Surveys were conducted along six randomly positioned, 15 m transects. High-resolution photos of a 50-cm x 50-cm quadrat were taken every 0.5–1 m along the transect line. Photo-quadrats were analyzed using the software (Trygonis and Sini, 2012; doi: 10.1016/j.jembe.2012.04.018). All species of hard corals encountered in the photo-quadrats were scored using the following four health categories as a categorical bleaching score (McClanahan et al., 2004; doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2003.08.024): unbleached/healthy (H), moderately bleached (M: 50% bleached), and dead (D).