The Great Barrier Reef, spanning over 344,400 square kilometers, faces increasing threats from climate change and human activity. Addressing these challenges requires large-scale, coordinated conservation efforts. With 730 tourism operators and 1,500 permitted vessels and aircraft in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, there is an immense yet underutilized opportunity for collaborative site stewardship to build better knowledge of the reef.
Fitzroy Island Resort has embraced its role as the main custodian of Fitzroy Island Reef, implementing a structured site stewardship framework to generate valuable long-term data. Our approach integrates multiple monitoring projects, including photo point counts, weekly quantitative transects, RHIS surveys, reef photogrammetry, coral recruitment assessments, spawning observations, fish diversity surveys, time-series coral monitoring, and marine turtle population studies—all aimed at enhancing site-specific knowledge. By embedding standardized scientific methods into our stewardship model, we create high-resolution datasets that provide critical insights into reef health.
This presentation will showcase our site stewardship framework and demonstrate how tourism operators can integrate structured monitoring into their operations. If widely adopted, this model could generate a comprehensive reef-wide dataset, strengthening partnerships between scientists, industry, and communities—shifting tourism operators from observers to active stewards of the Great Barrier Reef.