Fire Coral
By Marcus Mcvay Jr.
Fire coral has several common growth forms; these include branching, plate, and encrusting. Branching adopts a calcerious structure which branches off, to rounded, finger-like tips. Plate growth adopts a shape similar to that of the smaller nonsheet lettuce corals - erect, thin sheets, which group together to form a colony. In encrusting growth, the fire coral forms on the calcerious structure of other coral or gorgonian structures
Facts about Fire Coral
Fire corals face the many threats impacting coral reefs globally, including poor land management practices releasing more sediment, nutrients, and pollutants into the oceans and stressing the fragile reef ecosystem. Overfishing has ‘knock-on’ effects that result in the increase of macroalgae that can outcompete and smother corals, and fishing using destructive methods physically devastates the reef. A further potential threat is the increase of coral bleaching events, as a result of global climate change
Distribution and habitat
Fire corals are found on reefs in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans and the Caribbean Sea.They form extensive outcrops on projecting parts of the reef where the tidal currents are strong. They are also abundant on upper reef slopes and in lagoons, and occur down to 40 m deep.