Coral....Gardens Under the Surface of the Oceans

A large variety of  beautiful coral with fish swimming around

They are beautiful, colourful and lovely. Seeing their colour and amazingly beautiful designs people call them gardens under the surface of the ocean. Some also name them as the builders in the sea. Some of them look like flowers, balloons, mushrooms, marble plates, jellyfish, horns of a stage or bud-like plants. 

A coral which looks very much like a plant

Coral is a soft little sea animal which looks more like a plant. What apparently looks like a single coral plant is infact a group of many corals growing upon the shells of one another. This is because coral is very small, mostly not bigger than a few millimeters. It makes its home upon the shell of a dead coral which eventually helps making a huge coral reef. What is more surprising is that coral reefs grow less than three centimeters each year, so it takes many, many years for a large reef to form. According to the scientists and marine experts Coral reefs have existed for more than 200 million years.

A great variety of beautiful Coral colony

Some corals look like a bit of jelly. They are no bigger than the nail of our little finger. Their mouth is surrounded by little arms called 'tentacles' which look much like fingers of a hand or stems of a plant. They are of great help for corals to gather food. They grow at right angle from the flow of water which helps them collect plankton from the water. Some of them eat little fish while others like to eat plankton.

Corals growing at right angle to the flow of water

 When a coral touches a tiny plant or animal floating nearby, it quickly comes into action and pulls it inside its tiny mouth with the help of its sticky tentacles.
Most of the Corals reproduce by asexual reproduction while some also breed sexually by spawning. Polyps of the same species release gametes simultaneously over a period of several nights around a full moon (meaning like human beings corals also love full moon...).

A beautiful Mushroom like coral

The baby coral keeps on swimming through the water until it finds a place to build its house on a rock or the shell of a dead coral. After making its home on a rock or the shell of its dead family member, it never swims again. Now it starts secreting a special kind of glue from its glands and using this glue sticks itself to the rock or the shell of the other coral. After making this strong union, it starts its job of building itself a house with the help a juice from its body that turns into a kind of stone. These tiny little shell houses are called coral too. Over hundreds and thousands of years these coral communities form great structures. The greatest structure of this kind is the Great Barrier Reef.

Corals spread like a grand concreter plate or structure

The coral grows in lovely ocean gardens in warm ocean waters. It grows in just about every colour, shape and design you may think of. It may grow to look like lace, jellyfish, a fan, a little plant, a leaf, a flower, a brain, the horns of a deer, or a ribbon.

Beautiful collection of Corals under the surface of sea

One day a bud will grow on the coral. This bud grows into a new coral animal. After many years there are so many coral houses huilt on top of one another and next to each other that they become a great wall called a 'reef'.

Frill like brown Coral

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest reef system composed of more than 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres. The reef is located off the coast of Queensland in north-east Australia.
The Great Barrier Reef, the amazing marvel of nature can be seen from outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made by living organisms. It is composition and artwork of billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps.
Great Barrier reef supports a wide diversity of life, and was selected as a world heritage site in 1981. 

Corals with a large variety of marine organisms around

CNN labeled it one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The Queensland National Trust named it a state icon of Queensland. A large part of the reef is protected by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which helps to limit the impact of human use, such as fishing and tourism.
More pictures of Coral....

Bleached Coral

Corals with their tentacles and mouths in focus

Lovely Pink Coral with its tentacles waving around

Brown Coral

Bud Like coral

Flower like Coral