Cato Reef Cato Reef Cato Reef, a part of the Cato Bank, is an area in the Coral Sea off the central coast of Queensland, Australia that is of approximately 21 km by 13 km of this 200 km area, where depth of water is typically less than 17 m. Upon Cato Bank Cato Reef encircles an area of 3.3 km by 1.8 km, area 5 km including a small shallow lagoon which contains Cato Island, a low-relief cay in the west that is approximately 650 by 300 m, area 15 hectares, 6 m high. Close to the southeast corner of Cato
Coral reef that build reefs. In the early Cambrian period, "Archaeocyatha" sponges were the world's first reef-building organisms, and sponges were the only reef-builders until the Ordovician. Sclerosponges still assist corals building modern reefs, but like coralline algae are much slower-growing than corals and their contribution is (usually) minor. In the northern Pacific Ocean cloud sponges still create deep-water mineral-structures without corals, although the structures are not recognizable from the surface like tropical reefs. They are the only extant organisms known to build reef-like structures in cold water. In "The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs", published in 1842, Darwin described how