From Discovery Channel Magazine -
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Red, yellow,
purple, even
glorious fuchsia,
coral reefs are the
Disneyland of
the underwater
world, complete
with characters
like shrimp,
clown fish,
batfish, turtles
and evil-eyed
moray eels.
Despite their stunning plant-like
beauty, coral reefs are in fact made
up of millions of tiny animals called
polyps. Most of these are about as
big as a pencil eraser and develop so
slowly that some colonies only grow
at a rate of 1 metre every 1,000 years.
But, small as they are, they create
the foundations for some of the
underwater world’s most intricate
ecosystems.
“Without corals there would be
no home for reef fish, crabs, lobsters,
octopuses and innumerable
other forms of life,” says Dr Thomas
Goreau, president of the Global Coral
Reef Alliance. “Coral reefs support
marine biodiversity, fisheries, shore
protection and tourism.”
“No other organism does all these
things,” adds Goreau, who previously
worked as a Senior Scientific Affairs Officer at the United Nations
Centre for Science and Technology
for Development, in charge of climate
change and biodiversity.
Spread out around the world,
mainly in equatorial regions, there
are more than 600 reef-building,
shallow-water coral species. They
are most diverse in warm water
areas like the Coral Triangle, a
5.7-million-square-kilometre zone
stretching westwards from the Solomon
Islands, past the northern tip of
Australia, taking in New Guinea, the
eastern islands of Indonesia, Borneo
and the Philippines.
Home to 75 percent of all coral
species, the Coral Triangle also
attracts 3,000 types of fish, rays
and sharks, as well as turtles and a
myriad of marine mammals including
22 different dolphin species.
However, it’s in danger, according
to WWF, the global conservation
group. A report from the group in
May warns that if steps aren’t taken,
the Coral Triangle could be wiped
out by the end of the century.
Coral reefs like these and “the
Great Barrier Reef in Australia,
the Barrier Reef of Belize and the
Florida Reef Tract are enormous and
stretch for thousands of kilometres,”
says Richard Leck, who leads climate change strategy on the Coral
Triangle for the WWF, and is a key
member of a campaign to protect
Australia’s Coral Sea.
It’s surprising enough that
corals are animals, rather than
plants, but even more surprising is
that they are relatives of jellyfish,
belonging to the Cnidaria group,
which also includes sea anemones.
Although sharing key characteristics
with these other creatures,
corals behave uniquely in the way
they eat, grow and reproduce.
