Great Barrier Reef Expedition (1928 - 1929)

Summary

The Great Barrier Reef Expedition was first suggested by Henry Richards and Matthew Nathan, both founders of the Great Barrier Reef Committee. Support for the Expedition came from the Committee, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and various government, university and public sources. The purpose was to investigate the zoology of the Reef, with studies also being done on oceanic and meteorological conditions, coral physiology, and possible fisheries. Although based on the Low Isles, Expedition members also investigated other islands. Expedition leader was C. Maurice Yonge, a marine invertebrate researcher who, like most other members of the Expedition, was British. Australian scientists to join for varying periods included Aubrey Nicholls, Research assistant to Yonge, Frank Moorhouse from the University of Queensland, and Gilbert Whitley and Tom Iredale from the Australian Museum. The scientific results of the Expedition were published in seven volumes between 1931 and 1968 by the British Museum (Natural History). Discoveries made by Expedition members included the phenomenon of coral spawning, coral bleaching, and that corals ate zooplankton but not phytoplankton.

Related entries

Published resources

Books

• British Museum (Natural History), Great Barrier Reef Expedition 1928-29; scientific reports, 7 vols (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1930-1968). Details
• Manton, Sidnie: transcribed and edited by Clifford, E. and Clifford, J., Letters and diaries: Expedition to the Great Barrier Reef 1928 - 1929 ([Independently published], 2020), 343 pp. Details
• Yonge, C. M., Origins, organization and scope of the Expedition (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1930), 11 pp. Details
• Yonge, C. M., A year on the Great Barrier Reef: the story of corals and of the greatest of their creations (London: Putnam, 1930), 246 pp. Details

Book Sections

• Iredale, T., 'Great Barrier Reef Expedition 1928-29: scientific reports. Mollusca part 1' in Great Barrier Reef Expedition 1928-29: scientific reports, volume 5, no. 6 (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1939), pp. 209-425. Details

Journal Articles

• Spencer, Tom; Brown, Barbara E.; Hamylton, Sarah M.; and McLean, Roger F., '"A close and friendly alliance": biology, geology and the Great Barrier Reef Expedition of 1928 - 1929', Oceanography and marine biology: an annual review, 59 (2021), 89-138. Details
• Yonge, C. M., 'The marine biological laboratory at Low Isles, N. Queensland', ICES journal of marine science, 6 (3) (1931), 459-62. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/6.3.459. Details

Resources

• Sir Charles Maurice Yonge Collection, James Cook University Library, 2018. https://www.jcu.edu.au/library/specials/sir-charles-maurice-yonge-collection. Details

See also

• Bowen, James; Bowen, Margarita, The Great Barrier Reef: History, Science, Heritage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 454 pp. Details
• Hill, Dorothy, 'The Great Barrier Reef Committee, 1922-82: the First Thirty Years', Historical Records of Australian Science, 6 (1) (1984), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1071/HR9840610001. Details
• Morton, Brian, 'Charles Maurice Yonge (1899 - 1986)', Archives of natural history, 25 (3) (1998), 431-48. Details
• Stoddart, D. R., 'The Great Barrier Reef and the Great Barrier Reef Expedition 1973', Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, series A: mathematical, physical and engineering sciences, 29 (1) (1978), 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.1978.0086. Details