Bushy Island is a vegetated

coral Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the subphylum Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact Colony (biology), colonies of many identical individual polyp (zoology), polyps. Coral species include the important Coral ...

cay A cay ( ), also spelled caye or key, is a small, low-elevation, sandy island on the surface of a coral reef. Cays occur in tropical environments throughout the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans, including in the Caribbean and on the Grea ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

in the

Great Barrier Reef Marine Park The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park protects a large part of Australia's Great Barrier Reef from damaging activities. It is a vast multiple-use Marine Park which supports a wide range of uses, including commercial marine tourism, fishing, ports an ...

. It is about 70 km east of Mackay. There are no other vegetated cays in the more than 600 km stretch between Bushy Island and Green Island. The coral species '' Acropora bushyensis'', one of many species in the genus ''

Acropora ''Acropora'' is a genus of small polyp stony coral in the phylum Cnidaria. Some of its species are known as table coral, elkhorn coral, and staghorn coral. Over 149 species are described. ''Acropora'' species are some of the major reef corals ...

'', is most heavily concentrated in Bushy Island lagoon, existing only rarely elsewhere in the eastern portion of the

Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...

and not at all in the western portion. The island is an accumulation of biogenic sediment similar to Heron Island, and it has been sufficiently stable to accumulate vegetation. A major component of the mobile sands of Bushy Island is

Foraminifera Foraminifera ( ; Latin for "hole bearers"; informally called "forams") are unicellular organism, single-celled organisms, members of a phylum or class (biology), class of Rhizarian protists characterized by streaming granular Ectoplasm (cell bio ...

, a type of

amoeboid An amoeba (; less commonly spelled ameba or amœba; : amoebas (less commonly, amebas) or amoebae (amebae) ), often called an amoeboid, is a type of cell or unicellular organism with the ability to alter its shape, primarily by extending and r ...

protist A protist ( ) or protoctist is any eukaryotic organism that is not an animal, land plant, or fungus. Protists do not form a natural group, or clade, but are a paraphyletic grouping of all descendants of the last eukaryotic common ancest ...

. Foraminiferan sands are more easily eroded off of the cay. Bushy Island is located inside the zero isobase on an elevated reef flat, onto which the cay often erodes.

References

Islands on the Great Barrier Reef Uninhabited islands of Australia North Queensland {{Queensland-national-park-stub