A short story about corals #3

Deep-sea corals

Dear faithful (or new) reader,
Relax and seat comfortably, it’s time to chill for a while.

Imagine one minute, you are in a nice lagoon, you just finished to drink your fresh coconut cocktail and you decide to go for a swim in the warm water. The sun is hot, you can hear the tropical birds from the island singing in the jungle far away. You have your mask, your snorkel and you start to nicely swim until you get to the reef. You calmly put your head underwater and the magic happens. Structure of incredible architecture and complexity appear, with colour you never suspected the existence, and graceful living forms flying around them. The wonderful ballet of colours stuns you for a while and you have to take back your respiration at the surface, but more by the emotion caused by the surprisingly beauty of this underwater world than from the real need of breathing.

Now will you believe me if I tell you similar paradise exists in the deep water of the ocean with temperature closes to -1° C. I know it sounds less attractive for you but let’s travel up to 6000m under the Ocean surface. Here the light is absent, it’s surprisingly peaceful and quiet. If you light up the place you will see that the cold-water reef doesn’t have to blush in front of his tropical homologue. The diversity of corals species is abundant and if you have followed the previous “short story about corals”, a question should be coming to your mind right now!

The amazing diversity of deep-sea coral reefs

How those corals can survive without sun light? Well, first I must tell you that we don’t  know so many things about deep water corals yet, even if Science is looking at them minutely now. Probably because most scientists prefer to study in a paradisiac place than in the freezing water of the continental shelve… and I am not really in the good position to criticize that.

So, the deep-water corals do not require zooxanthellae to survive in the dark Ocean. They are often orientated in the direction of the current flow and in areas with high current speed. It’s not hazardous, indeed, as a sessile organism, he fed on planktons. Each individual can contain thousands of polyps. When the tentacles are out, if for example a fish larvae wandering in the current touch just once the tentacle, a violent poison is then inoculated in the larvae via specialized cells called nematocysts (Exactly like the jellyfish who is going to sting you this summer). Dinner is ready!
 They are incredibly diverse and old! Yes, old is the correct word. Those fellas can reach more than thousand years old. In Hawaii, researchers showed that a colony of Leiopathes sp. was around 4 265 years old. And it’s not finished! Our dear human in white coats also found that due to the constant regeneration of the polyps some deep-sea corals colonies were still growing after 40 000 years old of existence! When you are that old it’s a sign that you are really though, and if you are though it can be really interesting for us.

 Do you see it coming reader?
The deep-sea corals are a huge interest in medicine. Indeed, some organisms who live among the corals have fascinating chemical compounds with anti-viral, anti-inflammatory and even anti-tumor properties. Maybe the problem of cancer could be solved by looking in our deep cold water. And who knows how many secrets that we can use are hiding the deep-sea corals?

But you know Humans, right? They are able destroy things they don’t even know and that can bring a lot to them. So, worldwide the deep-see corals reefs are already endangered, threatened mainly by the deep sea trawling: a technic that we should seriously banned in all the oceans (it was finally banned in Europe last year, yippee), also oil and gas exploration and are two villains from the previous episode: Global warming and ocean acidification.

A deep reef after a trawling

How can we destroy natural structure old of thousands of years full of knowledge in a second?

“It’s a sad thing to think that nature speaks and mankind does not listen” Victor Hugo

Talk to you soon again!

Léopold

If you are more interested by deep sea corals here a really good website where I find my infos: 
-Lophelia.org
-http://ocean.si.edu/deep-sea-corals

Sources images :
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia-cache ak0.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fdf%2F09%2Fa3%2Fdf09a319ed1df4e5747f05f45ee0bb75.jpg&f=1

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsafinacenter.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Ftrawled-coral-reef-NOAA.jpg&f=1

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