Coral community data Heron Island Great Barrier Reef 1962–2016

Here we describe benthic composition data derived from benthic photoquadrats collected over 41 surveys between 1962 and 2016 at four sites on Heron reef, at the southern end of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, to assess change in coral composition over time. Surveys have often been annual, in a few years sub-annual, and the longest gap is six years. A subset of the data from two sites with the most complete records has been fully processed to allow the size of all individual colonies, and changes in species composition and cover, to be tracked over time. The taxonomy in these quadrats has been carefully checked for internal consistency, and is generally at the species level. A second subset has been processed, but has not been through full quality control, while a third subset exists as images only. This is the longest, 56 years, regular photographic record of coral cover in existence, and provides a valuable temporal contrast dating back in time to more recent studies of greater geographic extent and/or resolution.