Colorful Coral
Brenna Dolan
Introduction
By the year 2030, 50% of the world's coral formations will vanish and that’s not a good thing. Now you will learn why coral is so important from the habitat of coral and how it is alike and different to many other sea creatures. The body structure is very unique, how coral comes in so many shapes and sizes, and finally the diet of coral is very different from many other sea creatures.
Habbitat
Coral’s habitat is not like most sea creatures, surprisingly the beautiful underwater creature can live up to 19,000 feet underwater, but reef building coral must live in shallow waters where light can go through. You can find the beautiful underwater sea creature in tropical waters. In the southern hemisphere there is plenty of coral. Coral is important because it plays an enormous part in the ocean. Why? Because sea creatures go to coral reefs to meet and breed. Now you know the habitat is not like most animals because the water has to be warm, shallow, or deep depending on the coral.
Body structure
The body structure can be different depending on the coral because there is 70,000 types of coral. Coral shows many shapes, sizes, and colors and reefs can look like beautiful underwater gardens. There is neon coral brighter than the sun. Schools of fish go through the holes of coral, people snorkle to look at all the fascinating sea plants and sea creatures all different colors and all of the sea animals making the coral reef come alive. The size of coral is 1 cm-3 m in height. Some special features are that they have stinging cells on their tentacles that they use to catch their prey. Coral can live from 3 months to 30 years soft coral lives alone when other coral tends to live together. The body structure of the beautiful underwater sea creature is definitely something out of the sea.
Diet
The diet is not what you think coral would have so that makes it unique. Coral eats plankton fish and shrimp. Even though coral gets most of their nutrients on algae they depend on sunlight. There predators are starfish snails and slugs. Did you know sea sponges sprout each other near coral . Now you see why coral has such a unique diet because you might not think how coral eats fish.
Closing
Now that you know the habitat of coral has to be tropical and shallow waters. The body structure can be different because there is 70,000 types of coral. Finally the diet of coral eats plankton fish and shrimp. Now you know all about coral habitat body structure and diet.
Go Fish
My “Go Fish” activity included buying a tank, supplies, decorations and fish. My budget was $250.00, I spent $167.52. I finished the project under budget. The theme I chose for my tank was “Under the Sea” I included a clam and a treasure chest as part of the decorations. I bought 7 fish which totaled 16 inches, that leaves plenty of room in a 20 gallon tank.
I enjoy “go fish” because I learned a lot from this project that when you go to get an aquarium you need a lot of things like a filter to keep the fish clean food and decorations so the fish can hide. I think this was a great project because we learned a lot.