File:Eastern Australia and the Great Barrier Reef (MODIS 2016-09-26).jpg

English: On September 23, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite flew over eastern Australia and captured a striking true-color image of the Queensland coast and a portion of the Great Barrier Reef.

The Great Barrier Reef stretches more than 1,400 miles (2,300 km) in the waters of the Coral Sea. More than 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands encompass an area of about 133,000 square miles (344,400 square kilometers). It also includes canyons, slopes, and plateaus of the adjoining continental shelf, and these deep water features expand the habitat, helping to create more than 70 different bioregions (broad-scale habitats).

The Great Barrier Reef is home to about 1,625 species of fish and more than 450 species of hard coral, as well as sponges, marine algae, soft corals and mollusks. In addition, the reef provides habitat for six of the world’s seven species of sea turtle as well as a critical dugong population. Tourists also flock to the reef, providing significant income to the residents of the region. It is no wonder that the Great Barrier Reef is often called Australia’s “National Treasure”.

On September 13, 2016, NASA and Australian scientists kicked off a two-month study of the Great Barrier Reef. The NASA mission, known as Coral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) is a three-year mission designed to combine aerial surveys using state-of-the-art airborne imaging spectrometer technology with in-water validation activities. CORAL will generate a uniform data set for a large sample of reefs across the Pacific Ocean, including the Great Barrier Reef, the Hawaiian Islands, the Mariana Islands and Palau.