Ocean mapping scientists from Geoscience Australia and James Cook University commenced a research pilot project to test whether ALOS AVNIR-2 satellite imagery can be used to extract depth and seabed reflectance data from an area on the northern Great Barrier Reef. Satellite imagery could provide useful depth data over large areas of shallow water that currently have no detailed survey data, such as for many coral reefs on the Great Barrier Reef. We are using airborne lidar (or laser) bathymetry data to compare against the satellite data in order to test how accurate it is.