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Acropora

Acropora sp.

Description:

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!

Habitat:

Coastal tropical waters

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9 Comments

miruhp
miruhp 12 years ago

Good shot...

Elsa
Elsa 12 years ago

Looking forward to seeing them!! :)

LauraMaria
LauraMaria 12 years ago

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!

Elsa
Elsa 12 years ago

Laura, did you see the coral reef mission? You should add all your wakatobi pics there. I really like this shot. It glows!

LauraMaria
LauraMaria 12 years ago

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 :)

xiang
xiang 12 years ago

is the white coloration on the tips implies the start of coral bleaching? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_bleac...)

LauraMaria
LauraMaria 12 years ago

Thank you both :)

alicelongmartin
alicelongmartin 12 years ago

Amazing

Isabela
Isabela 12 years ago

Beautiful.

LauraMaria
Spotted by
LauraMaria

Indonesia

Spotted on Mar 28, 2010
Submitted on Apr 29, 2011

Spotted for Mission

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