Earth’s ecological assemblages are rapidly being driven towards unprecedented, novel states. Under global anthropogenic change, the detection, assessment, and monitoring of novel states requires innovative and robust tools that can be applied across ecosystems. These detection tools could have significant utility for ecologists and ecosystem managers, but we currently lack both a standardised methodology for calculating novelty and a guide for interpreting our calculations. Here, we use coral community data to develop and test a toolset for identifying ecological novelty across space. We explicitly address how various spatial and ecological features (e.g., quadrat size, sample size, community classification metric) affect our understanding of what constitutes a novel coral community in its broader context, adapting the Pandolfi et al. (2020) statistical framework to assess survey data from Heron Reef (Bailai, Gurang, Gooreng Gooreng, and Taribelang Bunda Sea Country). Once established, these methods can incorporate survey data from other ecological indicator species like corals to facilitate similar comparisons among different ecosystems. Developing this foundational and standardised understanding of ecological novelty across space could help scientists and managers identify priority areas for conservation and restoration efforts, in the face of ongoing and intensifying ecosystem change.