Mother-daughter team finds world’s largest known coral on Great Barrier Reef

A mother and daughter have discovered what is now considered the world’s largest known coral colony on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.Sophie Kalkowski-Pope and her mother, Jan Pope, found the massive coral late last year while surveying the reef as part of the Great Reef Census, reported CNN.

The initiative brings together more than 100 vessels to collect images and data to support conservation work.Jan Pope had dived at the site earlier and believed something unusual was there. The two returned with measuring equipment. When they entered the water, Kalkowski-Pope said she immediately realised the scale of what they were seeing. She filmed herself swimming across the coral. The video took three minutes from one side to the other.“When we hopped in the water, immediately I could recognize the significance of what we were seeing,” said Kalkowski-Pope. Together, they filmed a video, swimming across the expanse of the J-shaped coral. “It took me a three-minute video just to swim from one side to the other,” Kalkowski-Pope said.The coral, identified as Pavona clavus, stretches about 111 metres, roughly the length of a football pitch. It covers nearly 4,000 square metres.

Its size was confirmed through manual underwater measurements and high-resolution images taken from above the surface. Scientists later used the data to create a 3D model to help monitor changes over time.Researchers are studying the site’s conditions, including strong tidal currents and lower exposure to cyclone waves, to understand how such a large structure survived.The discovery comes as reefs worldwide face severe bleaching due to rising ocean temperatures.