A WWII battle named the sea that holds Earth's largest reef
Northeast of Australia, the Coral Sea stretches some two thousand kilometres down the Queensland coast and cradles the Great Barrier Reef—UNESCO-listed in 1981. In 1942 the same waters hosted a carrier clash among Japan, the United States, and Australia that kept its geographic name in the history books.
Classed as a South Pacific marginal sea and an interim Australian bioregion, the Coral Sea is largely wrapped by France's Natural Park of the Coral Sea and Australia's Coral Sea Marine Park. Queensland's coast bounds it west, Vanuatu and New Caledonia east, Solomon Islands approaches northeast, and New Guinea's south coast northwest via the Gulf of Papua. Southward it grades into the Tasman Sea near latitude 30°; Torres Strait links it to the Arafura Sea. Warm rains and cyclones define the climate.
Reefs and islets give the sea its name. The Great Barrier Reef—world's largest reef system—belongs to Queensland, while most reefs east of it fall in the Coral Sea Islands Territory; Chesterfield and Bellona features near New Caledonia sit in the geographic set too. Oil exploration on the GBR ended in 1975; fishing limits protect many zones. Birds, fish, and tourists converge on the cays, making conservation and visitation share the same turquoise inventory.
International Hydrographic Organization limits run from New Guinea's Bensbach entrance along reef edges to Solomon and Santa Cruz islands, down Vanuatu to Anatom, then via New Caledonia reefs and Middleton and Elizabeth Reefs to 30° south and the Australian coast. The deep basin formed between 58 and 48 million years ago as the Queensland shelf rose into the Great Dividing Range while nearby blocks sank, and several hundred quakes of magnitude 2 to 6 were logged between 1866 and 2000. A counter-clockwise gyre feeds the East Australian Current south toward the Tasman Sea, and surface water runs from 19 °C in the southern winter to a steady 27–28 °C in the north.
Source: Coral Sea
