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Project Noah Nature School
Acropora sp.
An Acroporid coral I came across. Those white tips at the end indicate growing tips. The coral skeleton gets laid down first, then the symbiotic algae colonise and give it its colour!
Coastal tropical waters
Spotted on Mar 28, 2010
Submitted on Apr 29, 2011
9 Comments
Good shot...
Looking forward to seeing them!! :)
Ooh no I didn't realise they'd added a coral reef mission! Thanks Elsa, I'll go ahead and add them all! I have some other Hoga pics I need to put up too, as well as more from my trip!
Laura, did you see the coral reef mission? You should add all your wakatobi pics there. I really like this shot. It glows!
Kind of, xiang! Those white tips are the growing tips. The calcium carbonate skeleton gets laid first as the coral grows, then the algae that live within the coral move in. It's the algae that give the coral its colour, so that's why the tips appear white. So it's kind of the same principle with coral bleaching, heat stress makes the coral lose its algae so it appears white, hence the name coral bleaching! This one is healthy though :)
is the white coloration on the tips implies the start of coral bleaching? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_bleac...)
Thank you both :)
Amazing
Beautiful.