Today the team from UQ has arrived at Heron Island to commence the drilling of the Holocene reef sequence. This is part of a joint UQ/USYD/QUT Australian Research Council Discovery (ARCD) supported project to investigate the growth of Heron and One Tree reef over the last 9 ka. Very little is known about how the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) has responded or may respond to predicted environmental change and/or degradation. The goal of this project is to recover transects of cores up to 30 m deep to reconstruct the recent biological and physical history of reefs in the southern GBR in order to better understand how they may react to future environmental changes. The USYD team (Jody, Belinda, and Steph) will be joining the campaign next week. Wish us luck (and great cores!)

Jody