40 Fun Facts About Coral Sea

HMS Pandora sank on the Great Barrier Reef in 1791 while carrying captured mutineers from which famous ship?

HMS Bounty mutineers caught on Tahiti were locked in a makeshift deck cell that they called Pandora's Box.

The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought off Australia in World War II, was the first battle between which warships?

Aircraft carriers did all the fighting: the opposing fleets never sighted or fired on each other, attacking over the horizon by air instead.

Activists declared a micronation on the remote Coral Sea Islands in 2004 to protest Australia's ban on what?

Same-sex marriage campaigners sailed to Cato Island, raised a rainbow flag and named their campsite capital Heaven. The kingdom dissolved itself in 2017, after Australians voted yes to such weddings.

Which animated film sends its heroes riding the East Australian Current, which carries warm Coral Sea water south?

Finding Nemo opens on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, and the real current is the largest ocean current close to Australia's shores.

When the steamer Yongala vanished in a 1911 Coral Sea cyclone, the only body ever found belonged to what?

A racehorse named Moonshine washed ashore, but no trace of the 122 passengers and crew was ever found. The wreck itself stayed lost until 1958.

James Cook named a Great Barrier Reef island in 1770 after which animal, the only land creature he saw there?

Lizard Island's summit is still called Cook's Look, because he climbed it to chart a way out to sea through the maze of reefs.

Raine Island, on the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef, is the world's largest nesting site for which animal?

Green turtles have nested on the tiny sand cay for more than 1,000 years, with tens of thousands of females arriving in a single season.

Which tech billionaire funded the 2018 expedition that found the wreck of USS Lexington on the Coral Sea floor?

Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, paid for the research vessel Petrel, which located the ship nicknamed Lady Lex more than 75 years after she was scuttled.

How does the crown-of-thorns starfish, the major predator of Coral Sea reefs, feed on living coral polyps?

By extruding its stomach through its mouth over the coral, the starfish releases digestive enzymes and absorbs the liquefied tissue, leaving white feeding scars behind.

What is the only permanently staffed facility in Australia's Coral Sea Islands Territory, built on tiny Willis Island?

A weather station set up in 1921 gives Queensland early warning of cyclones, and its handful of staff rotate every six months.

The Coral Sea, lying off the northeast coast of Australia, is a marginal sea of which ocean?

Pacific Ocean waters fill the Coral Sea, which stretches about 2,000 kilometres down Australia's northeast coast to latitude 30 degrees south.

Which base, within bomber range of northern Australia, was Japan's invasion target at the Battle of the Coral Sea?

Port Moresby, in what is now Papua New Guinea, was spared when Japan recalled its troop convoy, the first time in the war that a major Japanese advance was turned back.

Which island nation, bounding the Coral Sea on the east, was formerly known as the New Hebrides?

Vanuatu sits entirely inside the Coral Sea under the official hydrographic limits, which run down the eastern coasts of its islands.

Which ship, commanded by James Cook, ran aground on a Coral Sea reef in 1770 and needed seven weeks of repairs?

Endeavour was refloated only after the crew threw six cannons and ballast overboard. Divers found the cannons in 1969.

Which plant-eating marine mammal is drawn in large numbers to the seagrass beds of the Great Barrier Reef?

Dugong herds graze the fifteen species of seagrass found around the reef, and native title holders keep a legal right to hunt them for non-commercial needs.

Marine heatwaves in 2016, 2017 and 2020 caused which damaging event across the corals of the Great Barrier Reef?

Mass bleaching also struck in 1998, 2002 and 2006, and it leaves the corals that survive more susceptible to disease.

Which whales migrate through the Coral Sea Islands between June and November each year?

Humpback whales share the territory's waters with resident dwarf minke whales and many species of toothed whale.

Losses at the Coral Sea kept the Japanese ships Shōkaku and Zuikaku out of which decisive battle a month later?

Midway was fought in June 1942 without the two ships: Shōkaku was under repair and Zuikaku had lost too many planes and pilots.

Which strait between Australia and New Guinea is named after a navigator who sailed through it for Spain in 1606?

Torres Strait got its name from the Scottish geographer Alexander Dalrymple, who found the navigator's testimony among captured Spanish documents.

Which Category 5 cyclone passed directly over Willis Island in 2011 before striking Queensland near Mission Beach?

Yasi was strong enough to alter the shape of Willis Island and strip much of its vegetation; the four staff had been evacuated the day before.

Which sea does the Coral Sea merge with to the south, along the parallel of 30 degrees south?

Tasman Sea waters are cooler: the East Australian Current carries warm Coral Sea water south into them, running strongest around February.

Which peninsula, the northernmost extremity of mainland Australia, forms the western shore of the northern Coral Sea?

Cape York Peninsula marks the join: official charts draw the Coral Sea's western limit from New Guinea to its north-west tip.

Which archipelago in the Coral Sea is ringed by the world's longest continuous barrier reef, enclosing a vast lagoon?

New Caledonia's reef and lagoon joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2008, and the lagoon covers about 24,000 square kilometres.

Which natural resource was briefly mined on several remote Coral Sea islands during the 1870s and 1880s?

Guano, the seabird droppings prized as fertiliser, drew miners to the cays, but no permanent settlements were ever established.

Which navigator, shipwrecked on Wreck Reefs in the Coral Sea in 1803, took a small boat back to Sydney for help?

Matthew Flinders and thirteen others made the trip in a ship's cutter they renamed Hope, and he returned with rescue vessels for the stranded crews.

Which explorer turned away from breakers off the Great Barrier Reef in 1768, two years before James Cook arrived?

Louis de Bougainville, namesake of the bougainvillea flower, was sailing west in search of a southern continent when the surf forced him to steer north and east.

Who built the 1844 stone beacon on Raine Island, the oldest European structure in tropical Australia?

Convicts raised the tower on the orders of the British Admiralty because the surrounding waters were treacherous, though it never served as a lighthouse.

Which American admiral, reporting to Chester Nimitz, commanded the Allied naval forces at the Battle of the Coral Sea?

Frank J. Fletcher was handed the command as a stopgap until William Halsey's task force could reach the area.

How did the United States learn of Japan's plan to invade by sea before the Battle of the Coral Sea?

Signals intelligence had confirmed most of the plan's details and targets by late April, giving the Allies time to send their ships to meet it.

USS Lexington, lost at the Battle of the Coral Sea, had originally been authorized in 1916 as what kind of ship?

A battlecruiser hull was already under construction when the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 halted such ships, so she was converted while still being built.

Tulagi, seized by Japan for a seaplane base days before the Battle of the Coral Sea, lies in which island nation?

Solomon Islands defenders, a small garrison of Australian commandos and an air force unit, had evacuated Tulagi just before the Japanese arrived.

Which river, with its delta southeast of Townsville, is the major river flowing into the Coral Sea?

Burdekin River flow is wildly erratic: because cyclones and rainfall vary so much, its annual discharge can change more than tenfold from one year to the next.

After an attack on her island home, Great Barrier Reef settler Mary Watson fled with her baby by floating away in what?

An iron tank used for boiling sea cucumbers carried her, her son and a wounded servant away, but all three died of thirst on a waterless island nine days later.

The Chesterfield Islands in the Coral Sea are named after what kind of vessel that sailed through in the 1790s?

A whaling ship called Chesterfield gave the reefs their name, and a whaling station operated on one of the islets in the first half of the 20th century.

What title did Dale Parker Anderson take when activists declared a micronation on the Coral Sea Islands in 2004?

Emperor Dale was first elected Administrator of the territory, and three months later his kingdom declared war on Australia.

Passing a narrow strait off the tip of Queensland, the Coral Sea connects in the northwest with which sea?

Arafura Sea waters lie beyond the strait, and the official dividing line runs from the Bensbach River in New Guinea to the tip of Queensland.

Corals on the inner Great Barrier Reef mass spawn during the week after which lunar phase in October?

Full moon timing is only one trigger: rising spring sea temperatures and the day-night cycle also cue the event, and outer reefs follow in November and December.

Which steady air currents, blowing from the southeast, dominate the Coral Sea for most of the year?

Trade winds rule the Coral Sea for most of the year, though a northwest monsoon can break in during January across its tropical western waters.

Which industry saw all of its previous projects on the Great Barrier Reef terminated in 1975?

Oil exploration was shut down six years before UNESCO declared the reef a World Heritage Site in 1981.

Which marine animal lives in an isolated dwarf form on the near-vertical walls of Osprey Reef in the Coral Sea?

Nautilus numbers at Osprey Reef are cut off from other populations by more than 100 kilometres, on walls that rise from about 2,000 metres down.