the.com/reef
the ocean's biggest living thing, built entirely by animals smaller than your fingernail
means A ridge of rock, sand, or coral lying at or near the surface of the water, often forming a hazard to ships — or, specifically, the vast living structure built by colonies of coral polyps.
from From Old Norse 'rif,' meaning a rib or ridge — the same root that gives us 'rib' itself, picturing the reef as a bone-like ridge breaking the sea's surface. Norse sailors who named these hazards knew them as ship-killers long before anyone thought of them as living wonders. (A separate 'reef' — the part of a sail you roll up to shorten it — comes from the same Norse 'rif,' the idea of a ridge or fold, which is why sailors 'take in a reef' in heavy wind.)
- living architects
- Coral polyps build limestone cities over thousands of years
- ancient builder
- Great Barrier Reef is roughly 500,000 years old
- tiny tenants
- Cover under 1% of ocean, host 25% of marine life
- secret algae
- Corals farm photosynthetic algae inside their own cells
- stress signal
- Bleaching is corals starving after expelling their algae
great barrier reef — world's largest coral reef system off queensland, australia, spanning 2,300 km
belize barrier reef — second largest coral reef system in world, off belize's caribbean coast
red sea coral reefs — extensive reef system between africa and asia with highest coral diversity