Coral reefs are famous for their brilliant colours. What many people don’t realize is that the coral themselves are white. They get those fabulous colours via a symbiotic relationship with tiny plants called zooxanthellae that usually live inside the coral.
Freediving has a very simple premise: you, underwater. That’s it. No SCUBA tanks or any other breathing assistance. Just you, holding your breath for as long as you can. Simple, but increasingly popular, and potentially very dangerous.
Coral is picky. Too hot, too cold, not enough sunlight, too much sunlight, too much salt in the water, pollution; coral is the Goldilocks of the ocean world.
Bioengineers at Trinity University in Dublin, Ireland, have discovered that limpets, a marine mollusk with a shallow conical shell, are able to remodel their shells when damaged.
As a rule, coral eat tiny floating animals called zooplankton. It’s a pretty passive way of getting a meal. But there’s a new study that shows that some coral might be more aggressive about their dinner.
The Red Handfish is an extremely rare reef fish that doesn’t swim around the Tasman Sea (between Australia and New Zealand). Instead, it walks on its distinctively hand-like fins.
