Coral Reefs
A microscopic animal cell starts life floating around ...
. . . until it finds the perfect bed to settle on.
Once landed, it begins replicating and growing into an inconceivably complex organism.
As an adult, it lives in a tight-knit community that builds an intricate society.
It hunts and is hunted, it shares news and resources and even has conflict with its neighbours.
It responds and adapts to stress with remarkable resilience.
The story of the coral polyp is not so different from our own.
…But its ancestors are 485 million years old.
The coral polyp is a unique animal. Although it hunts plankton with venomous tentacles, hunting only provides 20% of its energy needs. The other 80% comes from symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae) that they absorb from the ocean.
The zooxanthellae live inside coral tissues and photosynthesise, producing energy for the coral, whilst the coral gives the zooxanthellae a safe home. This mutually beneficial relationship is called symbiosis.
Zooxanthellae come in different colours, and it is these microscopic algae that create the colourful canvas we see when we visit a coral reef!
Coral reef colonies support an inconceivable number of marine species, from tiny invertebrates to pelagic sharks and manta rays.
Whilst the majority of coral reefs occur in the tropics, there are also cold-water reefs all around the world, especially in the deeper parts of the ocean!
Coral reefs cover 1% of the planet’s surface
= 348,000 km2
= 1.43 x landmass of the UK
1 billion
people directly
benefit from
coral reef
services
Terrific Trio
Coral reefs can’t survive on their own. They are part of a tropical triad, their survival is inextricably linked to seagrass and mangrove ecosystems and vice versa.
Together, these three ecosystems look after each other and are all healthier in each other’s presence.
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