Latest Reef Stories
NOAA scientists dove to new depths in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands for the first time last month, venturing into never before seen territory.Divers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration vessel Hiialakai reached depths of 250 feet over the past month while studying reefs where no human had ever gone before."We were seeing reefs that no human has ever laid eyes on before," Randall Kosaki, the research mission's lead scientist and diver, told the Associated...
Australia's Great Barrier Reef is in danger of being ruined by climate change and coastal development, according to a report on Wednesday.According to the inaugural reef report issued by the Marine Park Authority, the reef has been hit by two different cycles of coral bleaching, and now algae and species infestation is becoming a serious problem that may threaten the reef's existence."While populations of almost all marine species are intact and there are no records of extinctions, some...
Environmentalists are pushing for the protection of a large swath of coral reef off the Southeastern US coast.The underwater expanse of creatures and coral lies at the bottom of the Atlantic and spans about 23,000 square miles from North Carolina to Florida.But the collective is under threat from overfishing and energy prospects, and environmentalists are moving to push legislation that would protect the region.They claim that crab pots and bottom trawling for shrimp are the greatest threats...
Scientists in Australia announced on Thursday that a new genome-mapping project is underway that could help the Great Barrier Reef fight off the threats of climate change and toxic farm chemicals. The geneticists said that they are working on unlocking the secrets of the colorful acropora millepora coral, which has slowed in growing the last few years. This coral is one of the main components of the northeastern tourist attraction. "This gene-mapping project has both practical and...
A new study shows that bleached corals bounce back to normal growth rates more quickly when they have clean water and plentiful sea life at their sideThe new research study led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego suggests that by improving overall ocean health, corals are better able to recover from bleaching events, which occur when rising sea temperatures force corals to expel their symbiotic algae, known as zooxanthellae. Coral bleaching is a phenomenon...
An international team of researchers has studied the coralline algae fossils that lived on the last coral reefs of the Mediterranean Sea between 7.24 and 5.3 million years ago. Mediterranean algae and coral reefs began to resemble present day reefs following the isolation of the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean and global cooling 15 and 20 million years ago respectively. The research team from the University of Granada (UGR) and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italia) show...
Australia's Great Barrier Reef will to be the first of the world's great coral reefs to die from warming water, a leading marine scientist said. There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so, said Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Veron commented Monday as a consortium of reef experts meeting in London predicted climate change would doom coral reefs around the world by the middle of this...
A group of experts warned on Monday that increasing acidity of the world's oceans and warming water temperatures from CO2 emissions could wipe out coral reefs by the end of this century.At a meeting in London, the scientists said the pace of CO2 emissions would mean a level of 450 parts per million (ppm) of atmospheric CO2 will be reached by 2050, placing coral reefs on a path to extinction in the following decades."Coral reef survival is balancing on a knife edge as the combined effects of...
The thought of coral reefs tends to conjure up images of tropical vacations, complete with snorkeling among tropical fish in crystal clear waters.Rapid climate change, and increased pollution, ocean acidification and overfishing threaten to darken this picture considerably. These factors heavily stress corals, and thus put both the countless marine organisms that count on corals for habitat and shelter, and the $1 billion dollar tourism industry fueled by coral reefs at significant...
As global warming whips up more powerful and frequent hurricanes and storms, the world's coral reefs face increased disruption to their ability to breed and recover from damage.That's one of the findings from a new scientific study of the fate of corals in the wake of large climate-driven bleaching and storm events."We have found clear evidence that coral recruitment "“ the regrowth of young corals "“ drops sharply in the wake of a major bleaching event or a hurricane," says lead author...
Latest Reef Reference Libraries
Coral reefs are submerged structures consisting of calcium carbonate secreted by corals. Coral reefs are colonies of small animals found in marine waters that enclose few nutrients. The majority of coral reefs are constructed from stony corals, which then consist of polyps that come together in groups. The polyps are like small sea anemones, to which they are very closely related. Unlike the sea anemones, coral polyps secrete hard carbonate exoskeletons which provide support and protections...
Chalice Corals, are a family of stony corals in the Pectiniidae family. Members of this family are mostly colonial but at least one species, Echinomorpha nishihirai, is solitary. These corals are endemic to the Indian and Pacific oceans. Pectiniids have a number of different forms but are basically streamlined and smooth. Polyps are large and brightly colored and resemble those of members of the Mussidae family of corals. The polyps are only extended at night. Tentacles are translucent,...
Siderastreidae is a family of colonial, reef building stony corals. Members of this family include symbiotic algae in their tissues which help provide their energy requirements. The World Register of Marine Species lists 7 genera within this family: Anomastraea, Coscinaraea, Craterastrea, Horastrea, Psammocora, Pseudosiderastrea, and Siderastrea. Corals in this family vary in form and include massive, thickly encrusting, columnar, and irregular forms. Corallites are linked by flowing...
Horn corals, known as Rugosa or Tetracoralla, are an extinct order of coral that were abundant during the Middle Ordovician to Late Permian stages. They were known as horn corals because of a unique horn-shaped chamber with a wrinkled (rugose) wall. These mostly solitary corals often reached lengths of nearly 40 inches. However, some species could form large colonies. Rugose corals have a skeleton made up of calcite that is often fossilized. Like modern corals, rugose corals were...
Tabulata is a family of extinct tabulate corals. These corals lived entirely during the Paleozoic era, being found from the Ordovician to the Permian stages. There are about 300 known genera of tabulate corals, of which Aulopora, Favosites, Halysites, Heliolites, Pleurodictyum, Sarcinula and Syringopora are the most common in the fossil record. These corals were mostly found in the shallow waters of the Silurian and Devonian, after which, they became much less common. They became extinct...
