• A year of discovery on a coral island

In May 1928, a group of young Britons set out for the voyage of a lifetime. Sailing to the other side of the world, they were off to spend a year on a coral island, all in the name of science. With little experience of the tropics, imagine their excitement to have their own coral reef laboratory right on their doorstep! Instigated by the Brisbane-based Great Barrier Reef Committee, the Great Barrier Reef Expedition selected a small coral cay called Low Isles for their year-long scientific programme. Due to a lack of resources and trained people in Australia, the committee approached the Royal Society in London for help in organising the scientific study. The research team comprised mostly British scientists, in collaboration with several Australian researchers. It was led by 27-year-old Maurice Yonge, accompanied by his wife, who was the medical officer. This famous expedition was ground breaking as it was the first in-depth and long-term study of a coral reef. The approach was multidisciplinary, and each scientist focussed on their area of expertise – biology, ecology, physiology, chemistry and geomorphology. Even more remarkable for that era was the relative youth of the team and the presence of four women in the starting line-up of 10.

Located 15km offshore from Port Douglas, Low Isles is a low wooded island girdled by a coral reef. It is situated in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) lagoon approximately halfway between the northern and southern extremities of the reef, and midway between the mainland and the outer barrier reef. In 1878, a manned lighthouse was installed to facilitate ship navigation in the inner channel.

The expeditioners arrived at Low Isles on the 16 July 1928 and got straight to work. Unfamiliar with sandflies, sunburn and the hot muggy climate, the British team adapted well to their new home. As mid-summer approached, Maurice Yonge described the living conditions as a “perpetual Turkish bath”! The team was provisioned weekly from the mainland, including four dozen loaves of bread and fresh water. There was an unwritten rule of ‘no shop talk’ at meal times. The Christmas dinner menu had a last minute change when the pre-ordered fowls failed to arrive and were replaced by tinned meat. Other than the company of the lighthouse keepers, a radio provided night-time entertainment. Mrs Yonge’s pet possum, acquired on a trip to Cairns, also amused the team with its antics as it raided the huts at night. In summer, they were visited by breeding Torres Strait pigeons, while whales passed offshore in winter.

Armed with a rock hammer, the team spent the daytime low tide on the exposed reef collecting specimens and conducting experiments. The nights were spent in the laboratory hut examining and cataloguing the catch of the day before preserving them, ready for their eventual return to England. One hundred cases of specimens were despatched at the end of the expedition.

The underwater work was done with a diving helmet: a rigid metal structure with viewing windows which is now at the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville. Samples could be collected down to 5m provided the

tender kept pumping air to the helmet and the diver remained upright, so that no water flooded the hardhat. Underwater “garden plots’’ of individual species were also monitored. Temperamental outboard motors were among the few problems encountered, and most reef researchers would tell you that nothing has changed today. There were no major medical incidents excepting a serious sting by a venomous jellyfish. When the victim fell unconscious, it was proposed to amputate the leg to save his life. Fortunately, the man’s wife, who was also part of the expedition, vetoed that option and her husband recovered, both legs intact!

The expedition also had an economic focus by investigating reef species of commercial interest. One such species was the trochus shell which was already being fished on the GBR: shells worth £60,000 were exported from Thursday Island in 1928. The mother-ofpearl layer of trochus is used to make buttons. The first accurate information on the life history of trochus came from the expedition’s intensive study of the growth rate and reproduction. One trochus, the shell of which was marked for this research is kept by the Queensland Museum. The experimental results were an early enabler for legislation on sustainable harvesting, and this trochus fishery continues today in the GBR.

The team worked hard and completed the original research program. They achieved more than was hoped and had time to survey other reefs along a 300km stretch of coastline, providing data on the geographical variability of the Northern GBR. The success of the Great Barrier Reef Expedition became apparent when the results were published in seven weighty volumes. These precious tomes provide a very thorough snapshot of the health of Low Isles and surrounding areas nearly a century ago, when the scourges of coral-eating starfish plagues and mass reef bleaching were unheard of. Today, these publications are just as valuable to our understanding of the GBR as when they were first issued. The expedition’s survey of cross-reef transects provides a detailed baseline of a relatively pristine reef. Resurveys at the exact locations of these same transects by subsequent expeditions to Low Isles have revealed the long-term changes to this World Heritage ecosystem.

This year marks the first century of the Great Barrier Reef Committee, now known as the Australia Coral Reef Society. It is the world’s oldest institution for coral reef study. What started as an audacious plan to study an island reef has become a priceless baseline from which comparisons can be made of reef health. While the Great Barrier Reef Expedition made Low Isles famous, nothing remains today that hints at its glory days as a trailblazing research station. This historic expedition was the stimulus for coral reef research in the subsequent decades and continues to serve as a ‘point-zero’ for monitoring reef health almost a century after the expedition. Today, there would be many budding marine scientists who can only dream of being sent for a year to a tropical island, replete with thriving coral reef communities.

Photographs from the Sir Charles Maurice Yonge's album of the Great Barrier Reef Expedition 1928-1929. Available www.gbrmpa.dams.me