The sea is full of treasures and magnificent things that make you enjoy your time under water and even living there. What can be found in the sea makes you feel that there is another world which encourages anyone to leave the traditional life that we live and go there to enjoy a beautiful and calm life away from the stress and different problems from which we suffer every day. The sea is always a perfect refuge for all of those who look for a nice place in which the can relax and discover more secrets about what is hidden in the world in which we live. Coral reefs are among the most fascinating things that you can ever see in the sea. They attract your attention and dazzle you with their beauty, colors and shapes, but do you have any information about these magnificent coral reefs and how they are built? Let’s read what is presented here to discover more about these dazzling reefs that attract people from around the world to enjoy seeing them.
♦ How are the coral reefs built?
There are colonies of tiny animals that live in marine waters and are responsible for building coral reefs from stony corals. The coral reefs may be thought to be like the sea anemones in terms of the structure, but in fact this is not true as the corals secrete calcium carbonate structures, hard carbonate exoskeletons, that help in supporting the coral reefs and holding them together forming the huge and magnificent shapes that we see.
♦ Where do the coral reefs grow?
Coral reefs do not cover a large area of the ocean surface as what they occupy is less than 0.1% of the ocean surface in the whole world. It is impossible to say that the coral reefs can be found anywhere in which there is water as there are certain factors that are essential for the coral reefs to grow. The best environment that is more suitable for the growth of reefs is the warm water which is sunny, agitated, shallow and clear.
♦ What is the importance of coral reefs?
Although the coral reefs do not occupy a large area of the ocean surface in the world, they are home to a large number of creatures that live in the sea and are estimated to be approximately 25% of the total marine species that live in this world. The marine species that take the coral reefs as a home to live in include mollusks, crustaceans, tunicates, echinoderms, cnidarians, worms, sponges and fish.
The coral reefs are not just important for the sea creatures to live in, but they are also beneficial to humans, fisheries and even shorelines. Coral reefs protect shorelines and attract people from around the world to dive and enjoy seeing them.
♦ The beautiful coral reefs are threatened
It may be thought that the coral reefs are hard and difficult to be destroyed, but in fact this is completely untrue as the coral reefs are fragile and there are many factors and changes that are more than enough for threatening and destroying these coral reefs such as oceanic acidification, climate change, fishing, water pollution, using huge amounts of reef resources and algal growth.
